LIBRARY OF CONGRESS.* 



4%. 



UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, 



STUDIES 



6 



PHILOSOPHY AND THEOLOGY. 



BY 



JOSEPH HAVEN, D.D., 

PROFESSOR IN CHICAGO THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY. 





ANDOVER: 
WARREN F. DRAPER, 

MAIN STREET. 
1 8 6 9. 



Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1869, by 
WARREN F. DRAPER, 
In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts. 



andoveb : 
printed by warren f. draper. 

press, geo. c. rand & avery. 



PEE FACE. 



The essays which follow are, as the title denotes, 
studies, which, from time to time, during the years of 
professional life, have engaged the writers attention, 
and occupied his most thoughtful hours. Many of 
them have been already published in the Bibliotheca 
Sacra, and elsewhere. The themes discussed are how- 
ever, for the most part, of permanent interest ; and as 
such, the discussions have a value as contributions to 
philosophical and theological science. For the con- 
venience of many, especially my former pupils in Col- 
lege and Seminary, these essays are now gathered into 
a volume, with such notes as seemed to be required. 

The- author is well aware that neither metaphysics 
nor theology commend themselves to the popular taste 
at the present day. On the contrary, it is quite the 
fashion to decry them, and regard them as of little 
worth. There are those, however, — and the number 

iii 



iv PREFACE. 

is not a few, — who, amid the busy activities of an 
earnest and practical life, are accustomed to think on 
these matters ; who have felt the peculiar fascination 
of these grand themes and problems, which in all ages 
have exercised the most thoughtful minds ; and it is 
for such that I have written. 

These discussions are presented, it need hardly be 
added, not in the interests of any particular religious 
denomination or form of faith, but as simple and inde- 
pendent investigations of truth, which should ever be 
the aim of the Christian scholar. 

Chicago, January, 18®. 



CONTENTS. 



PART I. — STUDIES IS PHILOSOPHY. 

PAGE 



I. PHILOSOPHY OF SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON ... 9 

II. MILL VERSUS HAMILTON 72 

III. THE MORAL FACULTY 116 

IV. PROVINCE OF IMAGINATION IN SACRED ORATORY. 182 
V. THE IDEAL AND THE ACTUAL 210 



PART II. — STUDIES IN THEOLOGY. ' 

I. NATURAL THEOLOGY 23T 

II. THE DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITY 295 

III. THEOLOGY AS A SCIENCE— ITS DIGNITY AND VALUE 347 

IV. PLACE AND VALUE OF MIRACLES IN THE CHRIS- 

TIAN SYSTEM 376 

V. SIN, AS RELATED TO HUMAN NATURE AND THE 

DIVINE MIND . 429 



VI. ARIANISM — THE NATURAL DEVELOPMENT OF THE 

VIEWS HELD BY THE EARLY CHURCH FATHERS . 483 

v 



PART I. 
STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY. 



STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY. 



I. . 

THE PHILOSOPHY OF SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON, AND ITS 
RECENT THEOLOGICAL APPLICATIONS. 1 

In October, 1829, appeared, in the Edinburgh Re- 
view, an article sharply criticizing the Cours de Phi- 
losophie (then recently published) by Victor Cousin. 
This article, by its profound and masterly analysis, its 
critical sharpness, its combined candor and fearlessness, 
its remarkable erudition, at once attracted attention as 
the work of no ordinary mind. It was understood to 
be from the pen of Sir William Hamilton, Baronet, of 
the ancient family of that name, a lawyer by profession, 
at that time filling the chair of Civil Law and Universal 
History in the University of Edinburgh ; known to the 
literary circles of the metropolis as a man of extensive 
and varied acquisition, but not previously of established 
repute in the world of letters. A few years previously 
he had been an unsuccessful competitor with Wilson 
for the chair of Moral Philosophy in the university. 

On the continent, at the time of which we speak, 
few names were more illustrious in the world of letters 
and philosophy than that of Victor Cousin, then in the 

1 From the Bibliotheca Sacra for January, 1861, Vol. xviii. No. 69. 

9 



10 



STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY. 



height of his fame as Professor of Philosophy in the 
Faculty of Letters at Paris. His personal history, his 
learning, his reputation as a critic and an author, his 
familiar acquaintance with systems of philosophy, an- 
cient and modern, his clearness of thought, united with 
a beautiful transparency of style and a glowing fervor 
of delivery, rendered him as a lecturer peculiarly at- 
tractive. Audiences of two thousand persons not 
unfrequently thronged his lecture-room to listen to the 
discussion of themes not usually considered attractive 
by the multitude. 

To assail the favorite theory of a philosopher so 
distinguished might seem hazardous ; but the masterly 
ability with which the attack was made placed the 
writer in the front rank of philosophical critics. 1 

This article was followed in the succeeding year by 
another, on the Philosophy of Perception, in review of 
Jouffroy's edition of the Works of Reid, in which the 
leading principles of the author's doctrine of perception 
were first promulged, and the merits of other systems, 
particularly the doctrines of Brown, subjected to the 
most severe and rigid criticism. Three years later 
appeared, in the same Quarterly and from the same 
pen, the famous article on logic, in which the English 
logicians, and especially Whately, are somewhat severely 
handled. The reputation of the writer, as at once a 
formidable critic and a most profound and original 
thinker, was now fully established ; and in 1836 he 
was elected to the chair of Logic and Metaphysics in 
the University of Edinburgh, which he filled until his 
death, in 1856. 

Of the general characteristics of Hamilton as a phi- 

1 See note (A.) at the end of this Article. 



PHILOSOPHY OF SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON. 



11 



losopliical writer, there is little need to speak, since 
they are already so widely known. Since Kant, the 
world has seen no greater thinker than this man ; nor 
was even the sage of Konisberg his superior. One 
knows not which most to admire, his wonderful power 
of analysis, or his erudition, equally wonderful — quali- 
ties which in combination render him at once the most 
formidable critic of other systems, and the most clear 
and far-seeing discerner of truth in matters of subtile 
speculation, that has appeared since the revival of 
letters. His range of information was almost literally 
boundless, comprehending not merely matters connected 
with philosophy, but all topics of general knowledge. 
More widely conversant with metaphysical literature 
than perhaps any other man living, he seemed equally 
familiar with the whole range of theological, historical, 
and classical lore. After the manner of Leibnitz and 
of Aristotle — to both of whom, in other respects also, 
his mind bore a marked resemblance — he seems to 
have made himself master of what the human mind 
had as yet in its progress attained, as the preparatory 
step toward the enlargement of those boundaries by 
contributions of his own. To that power of philosophic 
analysis by which he was able, as by intuition, to 
resolve the most intricate and complicated problem of 
thought into its simple and primary elements, and that 
remarkable erudition by which he was able to take in 
at a glance the whole range of previous thought and 
labor on any subject, we have but to add a style almost 
without a parallel for precision, definiteness, and 
strength, and we have the chief elements of this man's 
power as a thinker and winter. 

Nor was he wanting in that attribute inseparable 



12 



STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY. 



from true greatness — candor towards those from whom 
he differed. Terrible as were the weapons of his criti- 
cism, no man knew better how to respect an antagonist, 
even while demolishing his opinions. Thus, for ex- 
ample, he speaks of Cousin : . " a philosopher, for whose 
genius and character I already had the warmest admir- 
ation — an admiration which every succeeding year 
has only augmented, justified, and confirmed. Nor, in 
saying this, need I make any reservation ; for I admire 
even where I dissent ; and were M. Cousin's specula- 
tions on the absolute utterly abolished, to him would 
still remain the honor of doing more himself, and of 
contributing more to what has been done by others, in 
the furtherance of an enlightened philosophy than any 
other living individual in France — I might say, in 
Europe." 

In personal appearance Hamilton was dignified and 
prepossessing, of somewhat commanding form and 
bearing, resembling in some respects our countryman, 
the late Daniel Webster. There was the same lofty 
and massive brow, the same repose and majesty of the 
features, and that certain stateliness of manner which 
marks a kingly soul conscious of its own power. In 
the later years of his life his natural reserve was 
increased by a difficulty of utterance, resulting from 
a partial paralysis of the vocal organs. Under these 
circumstances, a stranger on first introduction would 
hardly feel at ease ; while at the same time he could 
not fail to be impressed with the whole appearance and 
conversation of the man. In the respects mentioned, 
Hamilton contrasted strongly with Schelling, whom in 
those days, not long before his death, one might have 
seen at Berlin, — a lean and shrivelled old man, but 



PHILOSOPHY OF SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON. 13 



full of vivacity and fire, bowed and worn with the 
labors of years, but retaining all the enthusiasm of 
younger days, — busily engaged to the very last in 
elaborating his second system of philosophy, and to this 
end combating his own former views ; pleasantly re- 
marking that he found himself and his own former 
pupils the most difficult of all his antagonists to refute. 

As a psychologist, Hamilton should not be judged 
merely by the Lectures on Metaphysics published since 
his death. Interesting and able as they undoubtedly 
are, and containing much that is profound and original, 
they are not the measure of his strength, nor are they 
the result of his maturer studies. Prepared, in the 
first instance, merely for the class-room, thrown off in 
haste during the progress of the session at the rate of 
three per week, — each lecture usually on the night 
preceding its delivery, and the whole course within the 
period of five months, — never subsequently rewritten, 
nor even revised for publication by the author, they 
are by no means to be taken as the final and careful 
statement of his views. As such he did not himself 
regard them. They were the earlier and (it is not too 
much to say) the cruder productions of his mind. 
Taken as a system of mental science they are singularly 
incomplete — dwelling at undue length on preliminary 
matters, and elaborating in detail certain portions of 
the science, as, for example, the doctrine of perception, 
to the almost entire exclusion of other and equally 
important topics ; giving but a meagre outline of the 
sensibilities, and nothing, or almost nothing, upon the 
will. These features, together with occasional incon- 
sistencies and inadvertencies of statement, are the 
natural result of the circumstances under which the 



14 



STUDIES IX PHILOSOPHY. 



work was originally prepared. It is not to these lec- 
tures, consequently, but to the notes and dissertations 
appended to his edition of Reid, and the articles in the 
Edinburgh Review, subsequently collected and pub- 
lished under his own eye, entitled " Discussions on 
Philosophy and Literature," that we should refer for 
the real system and the true strength of the man. 

Even in these, it must be confessed, the system lies 
fragmentary and incomplete. It is to be regretted that 
we have not from his own pen, and as the result of his 
riper and later studies, a carefully prepared treatise on 
psychology. 

It is not, however, merely or chiefly as a psychologist 
that Hamilton is to be regarded. His mind was 
logical rather than metaphysical, we should judge, in 
its natural bias. It is from the point of view and with 
the eye of a logician that he usually looks at the prob- 
lems of philosophy, little given to and little believing 
in the speculations of a pure ontology, nor, on the 
other hand, in his observation of the mind, content 
with merely reviewing the given facts and phenomena 
of consciousness, but seeking to reduce them if possible 
to order under those great laws of thought of which 
logic is with him the expression and the science. It 
was to logic, as is well known, that the chief strength 
and principal studies of his later years were directed ; 
and it was upon his labors in this department that he 
wished his reputation chiefly to rest. 

The tendency to a logical explanation of psychological 
phenomena and metaphysical problems is shown, for 
example, in the manner in which he deals with the 
doctrine of the infinite and absolute, as held by trans- 
cendental writers; educing the general law that all 



PHILOSOPHY OF SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON. 15 



thought lies in the interval between two extremes, un- 
conditioned and inconceivable, but of which extremes 
one or the other must, by law of the excluded middle, 
be true ; deriving thus the grand principle that all 
thought is conditioned, and all knowledge limited and 
relative ; and finally, reducing to this general law the 
principle of causality, which by Leibnitz, Kant, Reid, 
Stewart, Cousin, and the great body of English and 
French philosophers has been held to be an original 
principle or datum of the human mind. 

With these remarks of a general nature upon the 
character of Hamilton as a philosopher, we proceed to 
notice more particularly some specific features of his 
system. 

Were we required to point out the peculiarities of 
his system, — in what chief aspects the Scotch philoso- 
phy as held by this great master presents itself as com- 
pared with other and previous systems, — passing by 
the whole science of logic, which he claims to have 
reconstructed and amplified, and confining ourselves to 
psychology, we should name first and chiefly the Doc- 
trine of Perception, with the closely related topic of 
consciousness ; while as a general principle, underly- 
ing the whole system and fundamental to it, appears 
the doctrine of the relativity and consequent limitation 
of human thought, or, as it may be termed, the Doctrine 
of the Conditioned. To these points our attention will 
be chiefly directed in the present article. 

A brief survey of the state of philosophical specula- 
tion in Europe at the time when Hamilton appeared, 
will best enable us to appreciate his labors and his 
contributions to philosophy in respect to the points now 
named. 



16 



STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY. 



The earlier part of the present century witnessed a 
peculiar awakening and activity of the philosophic mind 
in Europe. The previous century had closed, and the 
present opened, with the philosophy of Locke in the 
ascendant ; as indeed it had long been, both in Great 
Britain and in France. In the latter country that phi- 
losophy was known, indeed, chiefly through the medium 
of Condillac, who, in developing, may be said to have 
corrupted, the doctrines of Locke. In England, also, 
Hume, embracing the general principles of the system 
which Locke had advanced, and carrying them to their 
extreme but legitimate conclusions, had laid the foun- 
dations of a wide and dangerous scepticism in philoso- 
phy. Alarmed by these results, there had already 
arisen, at the close of the last century, a reaction of 
the public mind in certain quarters. Simultaneously 
in Germany and in Britain did such reaction manifest 
itself ; and in both as the result of Hume's speculations ; 
Kant in the former and Reid in the latter maintaining 
that, above and beyond the ideas derived from experience 
and observation, there are in the mind, connate, if not 
innate, certain great principles, universal and necessary, 
prior to, and the foundation of, all experience. Such, 
in brief, was the philosophic life of the last half of the 
eighteenth century — Condillac in France and Hume 
in England carrying out to false positions the principles 
of Locke ; Reid in Scotland and Kant in Germany 
laying, each in his own way, the foundations of a better 
system. 

The influence of Kant became speedily predominant 
in Germany ; and before his death, in 1804, he was 
acknowledged as the master mind of Europe in the 
domain of speculative thought ; while, in turn, the 



PHILOSOPHY OF SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON. 17 

sober, common-sense philosophy (as it has been termed) 
of the Scotch school was gradually attracting attention 
and gaining influence both in Britain and France. To 
this result, as regards the latter country, the labors of 
Hoyer Collard (who advocated this system) and subse- 
quently of Jouffroy (who gave to his countrymen an 
excellent edition of the Works of Reid, and of the Moral 
Philosophy of Stewart) greatly contributed. 

Such were the intellectual influences predominant in 
the department of philosophic science in the early part 
of the present century — the period when Sir William 
Hamilton, then passing from childhood to those years 
when the mind usually receives its first impulses and 
impressions in this direction, may be supposed to have 
commenced his studies in philosophy. Fichte had then 
come into notoriety as professor in the leading uni- 
versity of Germany. Schelling and Hegel were just 
coming upon the stage. It is easy to see the influence 
which would be exerted upon a youthful and inquisitive 
mind by the leading theories and the philosophic spirit 
of the time. Adopting in the main, and as the basis 
of his views, the ground-principles of Reid, he is at the 
same time an admirer, if not in some sense a disciple, 
of Kant ; and in the general spirit and drift of his 
philosophy, as well as in some of its specific doctrines, 
may be traced the influence of the sage of Konisberg. 
In the grand doctrine of the relativity of human 
knowledge, and the consequent denial of the possibility 
of knowing the absolute and infinite, he is with Kant as 
against Schelling and Cousin. In the rejection, in fact, 
of the whole scheme of transcendental and rationalistic 
philosophy, he follows Kant. He adopts the Kantian 
division (then just coming into use) of the powers of 

2 



18 



STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY. 



the mind into three great classes — the faculties of 
knowledge, of feeling, and of will and desire; which 
latter are classed together under the title of conative 
powers. He adopts, also, the Kantian notion of 
freedom. 

Passing now to notice more particularly the doctrine 
of perception and its connected topics, as held by 
Hamilton, we need hardly remark that, so far as psy- 
chology is concerned, it is here that his chief labor has 
been expended and his chief laurels won. It was pre- 
cisely at this point that philosophy was just then most 
at fault, and most needed the clear discrimination and 
decision of a master mind. It had long been the prev- 
alent doctrine of the schools, widely divergent as they 
were on other points, that the mind is immediately 
cognizant only of its own ideas, and not directly of 
external objects ; the latter being known, so far as they 
were held to be known at all, only through the medium 
of the mind's ideas, and not immediately or face to 
face. This doctrine, under a great variety of modifica- 
tions, had passed, as to its essential principle, virtually 
unchallenged for centuries, and had been the belief, in 
fact, of the great body of philosophers, ancient and 
modern. To Reid belongs the honor of announcing 
positively and maintaining boldly, though not without 
occasional inconsistency, the opposite doctrine of the 
immediate cognizance of external objects in the act of 
perception. But while he saw clearly the true doc- 
trine, he had not given it, in all respects, its full devel- 
opment or its ablest statement. Particularly, he had 
failed to discriminate between the various forms which 
the opposite doctrine had at different times and in the 
different schools assumed, and had therefore failed to 



PHILOSOPHY OF StR WILLIAM HAMILTON. 19 

give due sharpness and precision to the statement of 
the trfte theory. This it remained for Hamilton to do ; 
_nd this he has done, fully, completely, and once for 
all. The doctrine which Reid had left incomplete he 
elucidates and perfects, shows it to be the true and only 
tenable position, and that its rejection, logically and 
consistently carried out, leads to absolute idealism, or 
the denial of all objective and external reality. By a 
masterly analysis he reduces to a system and gives a 
complete classification of the various theories that may 
be and have been held in regard to perception, draws 
the dividing line between presentative and representa- 
tive knowledge, and maintains that we know the ex- 
ternal world, as we know the operations of our own 
minds, by immediate and intuitive perception. 

" If we interrogate consciousness concerning the 
point in question, the response is categorical and clear. 
When I concentrate my attention in the simplest act 
of perception, I return from my observation with the 
most irresistible conviction of two facts, or rather, two 
branches of the same fact — that / am, and that some- 
thing different from me exists. In this act I am 
conscious of myself as the perceiving subject, and of an 
external reality as the object perceived ; and I am 
conscious of both existences in the same indivisible 
moment of intuition. The knowledge of the subject 
does not precede nor follow the knowledge of the 
object ; neither determines, neither is determined by, 
the other. The two terms of correlation stand in 
mutual counterpoise and equal independence ; they 
are given as connected in the synthesis of knowledge, 
but as contrasted in the antithesis of existence. Such 
is the fact of perception as revealed in consciousness, 



20 



STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY". 



and as it determines mankind in general in their equal 
assurance of the reality of an external world and of 
the existence of their own minds. Consciousness 
declares our knowledge of material qualities to be in- 
tuitive" 1 

According as the truth of this testimony of con- 
sciousness is unconditionally admitted, or in part or 
wholly rejected, there result divers possible and actual 
systems of philosophy, thus classified by Hamilton. If 
the veracity of consciousness be fully admitted, and the 
antithesis of mind and matter as given in perception be 
taken as real, we have the system of natural realism. 
If the reality of the antithesis be denied, we have the 
scheme of absolute identity, mind and matter being 
mere phenomenal modifications of one common sub- 
stance. If, further, we deny the independence of one 
or the other of the two original factors, the subject or 
the object, as given in perception, making the subject 
the original and deriving the object from it, we have 
idealism ; making the object the original and deriving - 
the subject from it, materialism. Or if, again, we deny 
the reality of both subject and object as given in the 
act of perception, consciousness being regarded as 
merely a phenomenon, we obtain nihilism. There is 
still another course possible, that is, with the idealist, 
to deny the immediate cognizance of an external world 
in the act of perception ; while at the same time we 
do not, with the idealist, deny the actual existence of 
that world, but, on the contrary, assume its existence 
on the ground of an irresistible and universal belief in 
its reality. This system, the most illogical and incon- 
sequent of all, yet in fact adopted by the great majority 

1 Discussions on Phil, and Lit. (Am. ed.), P- 60. 



PHILOSOPHY OF SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON. 21 

of philosophers, from the ancients to Descartes, and 
from Descartes to Brown, is termed by Hamilton, cos- 
mothetic realism, or hypothetical realism. 

It is against this system, accordingly, that Sir William 
directs his chief attack, tracing it to its source, and 
showing it to be without the shadow of a foundation. 
It rests upon the tacitly assumed principle — a principle 
that has strangely passed unchallenged through suc- 
cessive schools of philosophy for centuries — that the 
relation of knowledge implies the analogy of existence ; 
in other words, that like knows like, or that what is 
known must be similar to that which knows — a prin- 
ciple that lies at the basis of all systems which deny 
the immediate cognizance of external objects in percep- 
tion. To this principle may be traced the intuitional 
species of the schools, the ideas of Descartes, the pre- 
established harmony of Leibnitz, the vision in Deity of 
Mallebranche, the phenomena of Kant, the external 
states of Brown. This principle Hamilton characterizes 
as k4 nothing more than an irrational attempt to explain 
what is in itself inexplicable. How the similar or the 
same is conscious of itself is not a whit less inconceiv- 
able than how one contrary is immediately percipient 
of another. It at best only removes our admitted 
ignorance by one step back ; and then, in place of our 
knowledge simply originating from the incomprehensible, 
it ostentatiously departs from the absurd." 1 

The theory of representative perception is shown by 
Hamilton to be unnecessary, destructive of itself, and 
destructive of all evidence of the existence of an ex- 
ternal world, — unnecessary, inasmuch as it undertakes 
to assign a reason for that which requires and admits 

1 Discussions, etc., p. 68. 



22 



STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY. 



of no explanation beyond the simple fact ; while the 
reason assigned is itself no less incomprehensible than 
the theory which it proposes to explain, it being just 
as inexplicable how an unknown external object can 
be represented to the mind as how it can be imme- 
diately perceived, i.e. without representation ; — destruc- 
tive of itself, inasmuch as it denies the veracity of 
consciousness, which testifies to our immediate percep- 
tion of an external world, and thus subverts the foun- 
dation and destroys the possibility of all knowledge. 
" The first act of hypothetical realism is thus an act of 
suicide ; philosophy thereafter is at best but an en- 
chanted corpse, awaiting only the exorcism of the 
sceptic to relapse into its proper nothingness." The 
theory is, moreover, destructive of all evidence that an 
external world really exists ; since the only evidence 
we have of such a reality is the testimony of conscious- 
ness in the act of perception, and that is by the theory 
deliberately set aside as unreliable ; thus rendering 
problematical the existence of the very facts which it 
undertakes to account for. 

We cannot follow in detail the arguments by which 
Sir William proceeds to demolish the theory of repre- 
sentative perception in its various forms. It is sufficient 
to say that the work is most effectually done, and the 
question, it would seem, put at rest for the present, if 
not for all time. 

The precise relation of perception and sensation to 
each other is clearly pointed out by Hamilton. Percep- 
tion is only a special mode of knowledge, and sensation 
is a special mode of feeling. The relation is therefore 
a generic one — the relation which holds universally 
between knowledge and feeling. These are always 



PHILOSOPHY OF SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON. 



2-3 



co-existent, yet always distinct, and thus it is with 
respect to perception and sensation. " A cognition is 
objective, that is, our consciousness is then relative to 
something different from the present state of the mind 
itself; a feeling, on the contrary, is subjective, that is, 
our consciousness is exclusively limited to the pleasure 
or pain experienced by the thinking subject. Cognition 
and feeling are always co-existent. The purest act of 
knowledge is always colored by some feeling of pleasure 
or pain ; for no energy is absolutely indifferent, and 
the grossest feeling exists only as it is known in con- 
sciousness. This being the case of cognition and feel- 
ing in general, the same is true of perception and 
sensation in particular. Perception proper is the con- 
sciousness, through the senses, of the qualities of an 
object known as different from self ; sensation proper 
is the consciousness of the subjective affection of pleasure 
or pain which accompanies that act of knowledge. 
Perception is thus the objective element in the complex 
state — the element of cognition ; sensation is the sub- 
jective element — the element of feeling." 1 

The great law which regulates the phenomena of 
perception and sensation in their reciprocal relation to 
each other — a law which Kant had indeed already 
indicated — is first clearly and prominently announced 
by Hamilton. It is this : Knowledge and feeling, per- 
ception and sensation, though always co-existent, are 
always in the inverse ratio of each other — a law at 
once simple and universal, yet overlooked hitherto by 
the great body of psychologists. That this is the law 
of mental action is shown by reference to the several 
senses, in which it appears that in proportion as any 

1 Lectures, Metaphysics, p. 335. 



n 



STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY. 



given sense has more of the one element it has less of 
the other. In sight, for example, perception is at the 
maximum, sensation at the minimum. Hearing, on 
the other hand, while less extensive in its sphere of 
knowledge than sight, is more intensive in its capacity 
of sensation. We have greater pleasure and greater 
pain from single sounds than from single colors. So 
also with regard to touch : in those parts of the body 
where sensation predominates perception is feeble ; and 
the reverse. 

The relation of perception and sensation is closely 
connected with the relation of the primary and second- 
ary qualities of matter — the primary qualities being 
those in which perception, or the objective element, is 
dominant; the secondary, those in which sensation, 
the subjective element, rises superior. But on this we 
cannot now enter. 

Closely related to the doctrine of perception is that 
of consciousness, in the Hamilton ian system. It is 
regarded, not as a distinct faculty, but as involved in, 
and the basis of, all the specific faculties ; co-extensive 
with intelligence, cognizance, knowledge. Conscious- 
ness and perception, according to this view, are not 
different things, but the same thing under different 
aspects. As in geometry the sides of the triangle sup- 
pose the angles, and the angles suppose the sides, and 
sides and angles are in reality indivisible from each 
other, while yet we think and speak of them as distinct, 
so in the philosophy of mind we may contemplate 
the same thing now under one, now under another of 
its aspects, distinguishing in thought and expression 
what in nature are one and indivisible. Thus with 
respect to consciousness and knowledge. To know is 



PHILOSOPHY OF SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON. 25 

to know that we know ; yet it is convenient to distin- 
guish, and so we call the latter consciousness. The 
distinction is logical, and not psychological. So far as 
regards the action of the mind, to know and to know 
that we know are one and the same thing. 

It is a singular fact, and' coincides with the view now 
given, that until a comparatively recent date there 
was no term in general use to denote what we now 
understand by consciousness. Prior to the time of 
Descartes the term eomcienlia had, with few excep- 
tions, been employed in a sense exclusively ethical, 
corresponding to our term " conscience/' The ethical 
is the primitive and the psychological the derivative 
meaning. Thus in the various modern languages of 
Romaic origin, in which the ethical and the psycholog- 
ical ideas are expressed by the same word — as in the 
French, the Italian, the Spanish — the employment of 
these terms in a psychological sense is of recent date. 
Nor was it until the decline of philosophy that the 
Greek language appropriated a distinct term for this 
idea. Plato and Aristotle have no single word by 
which to express our knowledge of our own mental 
states. The term avvalaBriois, in the sense of self- 
consciousness, was first introduced by the later Plato- 
nists and Aristotelians ; nor did they appropriate this 
term to the action of any specific faculty, but regarded 
it as the general attribute of intelligence. 

As thus regarded, consciousness is not limited, in 
the Hamiltonian philosophy, to the operations of our 
own minds, as in self-knowledge, self-consciousness, 
but extends to external objects. We are conscious of 
the external world, no less than of our own mental 
states. Whatever we know or perceive, that we are 



26 



STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY. 



conscious of knowing or perceiving ; and to be conscious 
of knowing or perceiving an object is to be conscious 
of the object as known or perceived. We cannot know 
that we know without knowing what we know — cannot 
know that we remember the contents of a chapter or a 
volume without knowing what those contents are. To 
be conscious of perceiving the volume before me is to be 
conscious of an act of perception in distinction from all 
other mental acts, and also to be conscious that the 
object perceived is a book and not some other external 
object, and that it is this book and not some other one. 
But how can this be, if consciousness does not embrace 
within its sphere the object thus designated ? 

The knowledge of relatives is one ; and, as all 
knowledge is a relation between the mind knowing and 
the thing known, the conception and consciousness of 
one of these related terms involves that of the other 
also ; in other words, to be conscious of the knowing is 
to be conscious of the thing known. So, also, the 
knowledge of opposites is one. To have the idea of 
virtue is to have the idea also of vice. To know what 
is short we must know what is long. But in percep- 
tion, the ego and the non ego, subject and object, mind 
and matter, are given as opposites, and are known as 
such. We know them by one and the same act, one 
and the same faculty. 

If consciousness be taken in this personal sense, as 
co-extensive with intelligence or knowledge, we can no 
longer limit it, of course, to the cognizance of what 
passes within our own minds. The definition which 
characterizes it as the faculty of self-knowledge must 
be "set aside as too narrow. If consciousness is equiva- 
lent to knowledge in general, then it is not merely one 



PHILOSOPHY OF SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON. 27 

particular kind of knowledge, that is, knowledge of 
self. In the Hamiltonian sense, we are no more con- 
scious of the ego than of the non ego, of the subject 
than of the object, of self than of the book and the ink- 
stand, as given in every act of perception — the knowledge 
of relatives is one : the knowledge of opposites is one. 
When, therefore, we find Hamilton himself, in his Lec- 
tures, laying down this " as the most general character- 
istic of consciousness, that it is the recognition by the 
thinking subject of its own acts and affections," the 
inconsistency of this position with his own doctrine of 
consciousness, as above given, is obvious. 

Consciousness implies, according to Hamilton, sev- 
eral things ; it implies discrimination of one object 
from another. We are conscious of anything only as 
we discriminate that from other things — conscious of 
one mental state only as we distinguish it from other 
mental states. But to discriminate is to judge ; judg- 
ment is therefore implied in every act of consciousness. 
So, also, memory ; for we cannot discriminate and 
compare objects without remembering them in order to 
discriminate and compare. The notion of self, essen- 
tial, of course, to consciousness, is the result of memory 
as recognizing the permanence and identity of the 
thinking subject. Attention, also, is implied in every 
act of consciousness, inasmuch as we cannot discriminate 
without attention. 

Attention is, in fact, merely a modification of con- 
sciousness, according to Hamilton, and not a distinct 
faculty, as maintained by Reid and Stewart. It is 
consciousness and something more, namely, an act of 
will — consciousness voluntarily applied to some deter- 
minate object — consciousness concentrated. 



28 



STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY. 



Here, again, an apparent inconsistency presents it- 
self; for, if attention is merely consciousness volun- 
tarily directed to a particular object, then how can 
there be, as we are subsequently told there is, such a 
thing as involuntary attention ? And if, moreover, 
attention is " consciousness and something more," how 
is it that an act of attention is necessary to every 
exertion of consciousness ? This would seem to imply 
that all consciousness is consciousness and something 
more — that consciousness must be concentrated in 
order to consciousness. The inconsistency pertains, 
however, rather to the mode of expression than to the 
general doctrine. 

The question whether all our mental states are 
objects of consciousness Hamilton decides in the nega- 
tive. The mind is not always conscious, he maintains, 
of its own modifications. Its furniture is not all put 
down in the inventory which consciousness furnishes. 
Of this mental latency three degrees are distinguished. 
The first appears in the possession of certain acquired 
habits, as, for example, the capacity to make use of a 
language or a science which we are not at the moment 
using. " I know a science or language, not merely 
while I make a temporary use of it, but inasmuch as I 
can apply it when and how I will." The riches of the 
mind consist in great part in these acquired habits, and 
not in its present momentary activities. Nay, " the 
infinitely greater part of our spiritual treasures lies 
always beyond the sphere of consciousness, hid in the 
obscure recesses of the mind." The second degree of 
latency appears in the possession of certain systems of 
knowledge or habits of action, not ordinarily manifest 
or known to exist, but which are revealed to conscious- 



PHILOSOPHY OF SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON. 



29 



ness in certain extraordinary and abnormal states of 
mind. Tims in delirium, somnambulism, catalepsy, 
and other like affections, whole systems of knowledge 
which have long faded out of mind come back to con- 
sciousness, as, for example, languages spoken in early 
youth, and the like. Facts of this class, too numerous 
and well authenticated to be set aside, and now gene- 
rally admitted, however inexplicable, go to show that 
consciousness is not aware of ali that exists in the mind. 

The third degree of latent modification appears in 
certain activities and passivities occurring in the ordi- 
nary state, of which we are not directly conscious, but 
of whose existence we become aware by their effects. 
In proof of such latency we are referred to the phe- 
nomena of perception. In vision there is a certain 
expanse of surface which is the least that can be de- 
tected by the eye — the minimum visible. If we sup- 
pose this surface divided into two parts, neither of 
these two parts will by itself produce any sensible im- 
pression on the eye ; and yet each of these parts must 
produce some impression, else the whole would produce 
none. So of the minimum audible ; the sound of 
distant waves is made up»of a multitude of little sounds, 
undistinguished by the ear, unknown to consciousness. 
The same is true of the other senses. The laws of 
association also furnish evidence of the same thing. 
As every one knows, it is impossible in many cases 
to trace the connection of thought with thought. The 
connecting links escape us. The truth is, they were 
never known to consciousness. The first and last of 
the series only appear, as when an ivory ball in motion 
impinges on a row of similar balls at rest, only the last 
of which is visibly affected by the impulse. 



30 



STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY. 



Iii view of this whole class of facts, Hamilton does 
not hesitate to maintain the somewhat startling propo- 
sition " that what we are conscious of is constructed 
out of what we are not conscious of; that our whole 
knowledge, in fact, is made up of the unknown and 
the incognizable." The evidence is such, he thinks, 
as u not merely to warrant, but to necessitate, the con- 
clusion that the sphere of our conscious modifications 
is only a small circle in the centre of a far wider 
sphere of action and passion, of which we are only con- 
scious through its effects." 1 

Without discussing the correctness of this view, it is 
apparent that if the term knowledge is properly applied 
to any portion of these latent modifications, the propo- 
sition that consciousness is co-extensive with knowledge 
requires some modification. If, for example, we may 
be said to " know a science or a language, not merely 
while they are in present use, but long after, and 
when we have no consciousness of any such possessions, 
then, in these instances at least, we know what we do 
not know that we know. It can no longer be main- 
tained that " we have no knowledge of which w T e are 
not conscious." It would seem inconsistent, moreover, 
to deny that memory is truly and properly a knowledge 
of the past, on the ground that " properly speaking, we 
know only the actual and present," and at the same 
time to speak of knowing that which we do not even 
remember. If what is positively remembered is not, 
properly speaking, known, but only believed, much 
less that which is not remembered. 

The question of mental activities and affections un- 
known to consciousness is one of great interest and 

1 Lectures, pp. 241, 242. 



PHILOSOPHY OF SIK WILLIAM HAMILTON. 



31 



importance, and deserves a more thorough investigation 
than it has jet received at the hands of English and 
American psychologists, hy whom, in fact, it can hardly 
he said to have been at all considered ; while in Ger- 
many, since the time of Leibnitz who first promulgated 
the doctrine, and of Wolfe who ably maintained it, it 
has been regarded as a settled and necessary conclusion. 
The more recent French philosophers also adopt the 
same view. 

We have been occupied thus far with the Hamil- 
tonian doctrine of perception and consciousness. There 
are other points of interest and importance in psychol- 
ogy, to the elucidation of which Hamilton has con- 
tributed not a little, but which we cannot here discuss. 
His views on inductive, as distinguished from deduc- 
tive, reasoning — indeed, his whole discussion of the 
processes of the elaborative faculty in judgment and 
reasoning — are worthy of the most careful attention. 
The same is true of his theory of pleasure and pain, 
and of his analysis and description of the sensibilities. 
We regard his treatment of these themes as among the 
most valuable of his contributions to psychology. 

But we must pass without notice these and other 
topics, to notice the second of the principal points men- 
tioned at the outset, the Doctrine of the Conditioned, 
or, more generally, the principle of the relativity and 
consequent limitation of human thought. We can 
hardly name a problem in philosophy more important 
and fundamental than this, lying deeper at the base 
of all systems, and giving shape to all. It raises the 
question, not of the value and validity of this or that 
process of thought, this or that mode of operation, this 
or that specific faculty, but of the value and validity 



STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY. 



of knowledge itself. To ask whether human thought 
and knowledge are relative is to ask whether we know 
things as they are in themselves or only as they stand 
related to us the observers. 

To borrow an illustration from the phenomenon of 
vision : To an observer stationed on some determinate 
portion of the earth's surface the position and move- 
ments of the heavenly bodies present a certain appear- 
ance. As he changes his position, the appearance 
changes. The knowledge thus obtained is evidently 
not an absolute, but only a relative knowledge, having 
relation to the position and visual power of the observer. 
Place him elsewhere, or modify his power of vision, 
and you change the whole aspect of the phenomenon. 
Now the question is, whether that which is true in this 
case of one portion of our knowledge may not be true 
in all cases and of all our knowledge ? Do we know 
anything as it is perse? Or is all our knowledge 
merely phenomenal — the appearance which things 
present to our faculties of knowing? If the latter, 
then would not a modification of our faculties produce 
an entire change in our knowledge of things ? And 
what evidence have we that the reality corresponds to 
the appearance — that the presentation given by our 
present faculties is a true and correct one ? 

How wide and fearful the sweep of this last question, 
and how startling the scepticism to which it points, 
will be evident at a glance. It brings us, so to speak, 
to the very edge and limit of the solid world, and bids 
us look off into the infinite space and deep night that 
lie beyond, and through which we and our little world 
are whirling. Another step — and we are lost! 

This problem, as we have said, of the relativity of 



PHILOSOPHY OF SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON. 33 

knowledge, really underlies all our philosophy, as a 
single glance at the history of philosophic opinion will 
show. It meets us, at the outset, among the first ques- 
tions that engaged the human mind in its earlier spec- 
ulations. It meets us in the most recent theories and 
discussions of the latest contending schools. From 
Zenophanes to Leibnitz, from Parmenides to Schelling 
and Hegel, it traverses the web of philosophic thought. 
What is the value, what the certainty, of human knowl- 
edge ? Know we realities, or appearances only — 
noumena, or phenomena ? It was the question of the 
earlier Grecian schools, solved, ultimately, by those 
ancient thinkers in the interests of idealism and scep- 
ticism. We know but the phenomenal ; things are but 
what they seem ; man is the measure of all things. It 
has been the question of the German schools, from 
Kant to Hegel ; solved here again, ultimately, in the 
interest of idealism and scepticism : tilings are but what 
they seem — the seeming is the reality. It has been 
the question of the Scotch school ; affirming that while 
our faculties are limited, and our knowledge therefore 
limited by our faculties, those faculties are not the 
limit of existence and reality ; but, while we know, 
and can know, merely phenomena, and not things in 
themselves, we are nevertheless not to regard ourselves 
and our faculties as the measure of all things. Such, 
in spirit and substance, is the teaching of Reid and 
Stewart in Scotland, of Jouffroy and Collard in France ; 
and such the doctrine of Hamilton, as developed in the 
whole tone of his teaching, and more especially in his 
philosophy of the conditioned. 

The doctrine of the conditioned, as it has been called, 
rests upon the principle that all that is conceivable in 

3 



STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY. 



thought lies between two extremes, which, as mutually 
contradictory, cannot both be true ; but of which, for 
the same reason, one must be true ; while, at the same 
time, neither of these extremes is itself conceivable. 
Thus, for example, we conceive space. It is a positive 
and necessary form of thought. We cannot but con- 
ceive it. But how do we conceive it ? It must be 
either finite or infinite, of course ; for these are contra- 
dictory alternatives, of which one or the other must be 
true. But we cannot positively conceive, or represent 
to ourselves as possible, either alternative. 

We cannot conceive space as bounded, finite, a whole, 
beyond which is no further space ; this is impossible. 
Nor, on the other hand, can we realize in thought the 
opposite extreme — the infinity of space. For, travel 
as far as we will in thought, we still stop short of the 
infinite. Here, then, are two inconceivable extremes, 
of which, as contradictory, one or the other must be 
true ; and between these inconceivable extremes lies 
the sphere of . the conceivable. Thus it is ever and in 
all the relations of thought. Thus, for example, as to 
time. As we must think all things material to exist in 
space, so we cannot but think all things mental as well 
as material to exist in time ; yet we can neither con- 
ceive, on the one hand, the absolute commencement of 
time, nor yet, on the other, can we conceive it as abso- 
lutely without limit, or beginning. Thus the conceiva- 
ble lies ever between two incomprehensible extremes. 
This is a grand law of thought — a law of the mind ; 
the conceivable is bounded ever by the inconceivable ; 
only the limited, the conditioned, is cogitable. This 
law of the mind, first distinctly developed and an- 
nounced as such by Hamilton, he calls the Law of the 
Conditioned. 



PHILOSOPHY OF SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON. 35 

It is evident that this law of mental activity is not a 
power, a potency, but an impotency, of the mind. It is 
a bound or limit, beyond which, in our thinking, we 
cannot go. Whatever lies beyond this limit, whatever 
is unconditioned, unbounded, is to us, and must ever 
be to us, unknown. It is the position of Hamilton that 
this impotence or imbecility of the mind, to think the 
unconditioned, constitutes a great negative principle, 
to which some of the most important mental phenomena, 
hitherto regarded as primary data of intelligence may 
be referred. 

The doctrine of the conditioned, as thus laid down, 
has special application to the ideas of the absolute and 
infinite, the idea of cause, and the idea of freedom. 

And first, as to the ideas of the absolute and infinite. 
What are the absolute and the infinite ? Can we know 
them ? Can we conceive them ? From the dawn of 
philosophy no themes have been more frequently before 
the human mind or have occasioned profounder thought. 
To get beyond the finite and the phenomenal, to know 
the absolute, to comprehend the One and All, has been 
the aim and ambition of bold and aspiring systems, from 
the ancient Eleatic to the modern Eclectic. To the 
philosophy of the absolute, in all its forms, stands di- 
rectly opposed the philosophy of the conditioned. The 
infinite and absolute lie beyond the bounds of possible 
thought and knowledge to man. They are unknowable, 
they are inconceivable. 

The better to understand the conditions of our prob- 
lem, let us see what solutions are possible. These are 
four, and only four. We may say : (1) That the infi- 
nite and absolute are conceivable but not knowable ; 
or, (2) that they are knowable but not conceivable; or, 



36 



STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY. 



(3) that they are both knowable and conceivable ; or, 

(4) that they are neither knowable nor conceivable. 
Each of these positions has been actually maintained 
by one or another of the opposing schools. 

The first is the position of Kant. The infinite and 
absolute are not objects of knowledge ;• but, on the other 
hand, they are positive concepts, and not mere nega- 
tions of the finite and the relative. A positive knowl- 
edge of the unconditioned is impossible. We know, and 
can know, only by means of our faculties of knowing, 
which thus afford the conditions of all knowledge. 
Now these faculties take cognizance, not of the infinite 
and absolute, but only of the finite and relative — the 
phenomenal ; in other words, not of things in them- 
selves, but only of things as relative to us. The former 
lie wholly beyond the sphere of our operations. 

This strikes at the root, of course, of all purely spec- 
ulative and a priori systems, whether of psychology, 
theology, or ontology. Rational psychology and trans- 
cendental philosophy are, at once, impossible and 
absurd. We are shut up, positively and strictly, to 
the sphere of the relative and phenomenal, the sphere 
of consciousness. Thus Kant, though often regarded 
as the grand apostle of the transcendental school, in 
reality subverts the whole system, by showing all knowl- 
edge of anything beyond the finite and relative to be 
impossible. It is the very object of the Critique of Pure 
Reason to analyze human knowledge as to its funda- 
mental conditions, and determine its proper sphere. 
The result is a declaration that the knowledge of the 
unconditioned is impossible. 

But while unknowable the infinite is not inconceiv- 
able. We form notions or ideas of that which lies 



PHILOSOPHY OF SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON". 37 

beyond the bounds of knowledge, the illimitable, the 
absolute. These ideas have not, indeed, any objective 
reality. Nay, they involve us in contradictions from 
which we can find no escape. Still they are concep- 
tions and not mere negations — positive concepts; and 
it is the specific province of reason (vernunft), in dis- 
tinction from understanding (verstand), to furnish these 
ideas. The reason, as thus employed — pure reason — 
is not, however, to be relied upon as a faculty of posi- 
tive knowledge. As such it is wholly illusory, conver- 
sant with phantoms, not with realities. It is not until 
we emerge from the domain of pure reason, and set 
ourselves to inquire of practical reason, that we can 
have evidence of the reality of the objects to which 
these ideas relate. 

The tendency of such a system could only be to scep- 
ticism. If the pure reason is illusory, how shall we 
trust the practical ? If the ideas of God, the soul, free- 
dom, and immortality, are not to be taken as realities 
when given by the former, how shall we establish the 
existence of the same upon the authority of the latter ? 
If the data of the one are mere laws of thought and not 
of things, how do we know that it is not so with the 
other ? 

This tendency is still further strengthened by the 
arbitrary limitation of space and time to the sphere of 
sense in the Kantian system. We think under the 
conditions of space and time ; thus we perceive and 
know all things ; but we are not to infer that the ob- 
jects of our knowledge are, in reality, what we conceive 
them to be ; for space and time are not laws of things 
but only of our thinking. If so, then when we come 
into the sphere of the practical reason or conscience, 



.38 



STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY. 



and find ourselves there under the law of moral obli- 
gation, viewing this as right and that as wrong, what 
right have we to affirm that this also is not merely a 
law of thought rather than a law of things ? What, 
then, becomes of our so-called eternal and immutable 
morality ? 

Nor was this system terminative of the controversy ; 
on the contrary it contained within itself the germ of a 
higher transcendentalism, and a more thorough-going 
philosophy of the absolute than any that had preceded. 
In the words of Hamilton, " he had slain the body, but 
had not exorcised the spectre of the absolute : and this 
spectre has continued to haunt the schools of Germany 
even to the present day." 

The second is the position of Schelling and the school 
of metaphysicians represented by him, who held to the 
direct apprehension of truths which lie beyond the 
sphere of sense and of experience, by a capacity of 
knowledge which is above the understanding and above 
consciousness, and which they call the. power of intellec- 
tual intuition. By sinking back into the depths of the 
soul itself, back of all sense-perception, all reasoning, 
all reflection, all consciousness, the mind has the power, 
according to these illuminati, of perceiving truth per se 
— things as they are in themselves — the unconditioned, 
the infinite and absolute, God, matter, soul. These 
objects cannot, it is true, be conceived by the mind, for 
they lie beyond the sphere of the understanding ; and 
the attempt to bring them within that sphere involves 
us, at once, in difficulties and absurdities ; we can con- 
ceive only the conditioned. But though not capable 
of being conceived, they may be known by this higher 
power of immediate intuition. Thus, alone, is philos- 



PHILOSOPHY OF SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON. 39 



ophy possible ; for as the science of sciences, it is and 
must be the science of the absolute. 

As thus endowed, and in the exercise of this higher 
power, the mind becomes identified with the absolute 
itself ; the distinction of subject and object, of the know- 
ing and the known, vanishes ; reason and the absolute, 
man aud the infinite, are one. 

The third position is a modification or combination 
of the two previous. The infinite and absolute are 
objects of knowledge, as with Schelling, and also objects 
of conception, as with Kant. This is the view of 
Cousin, the view so ably refuted by Hamilton in the 
article on the Philosophy of the Conditioned, to which 
we referred at the beginning. It is the peculiarity of 
the theory of Schelling, as already stated, that the infi- 
nite and absolute are known by a power above con- 
sciousness and superior to the understanding, in the 
operation of which all distinction of subject and object 
is lost, the mind knowing and the object known — 
reason and the absolute — becoming one. Hence, while 
known to the reason, the objects of this power are 
incomprehensible to the understanding, which can know 
only by consciousness and discrimination of differences. 
With Cousin, on the other hand, the infinite and abso- 
lute are known, not by any such indescribable, extraor- 
dinary, and paradoxical process, but by the ordinary 
method of consciousness, which, it is admitted, is 
implied in all intelligence and under the conditions of 
plurality and difference, which are the necessary con- 
ditions of all knowledge. As thus known to conscious- 
ness and by the ordinary methods of intelligence, the 
infinite and absolute may be conceived as well as 
known. 



40 



STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY. 



In opposition to all these stands the fourth position 
— that of Hamilton, as already explained: We know, 
and can know, only the conditioned, the relative, the 
finite. All thought conditions its object in the very 
act of thinking. To think is to limit. The infinite 
and absolute are not positive conceptions, but mere 
negations of the finite and relative. They cannot be 
positively conceived or construed to the mind. The 
effort to conceive them involves the abstraction of the 
very conditions which are essential to thought itself. 
We cannot, for example, conceive an absolute whole, 
that is, a whole so great that it cannot be itself con- 
ceived as part of a still greater whole ; nor can we 
conceive an absolute part, that is, a part so small that 
it cannot be itself conceived as made up of parts. As 
an absolute maximum and an absolute minimum are 
each and equally unthinkable, in other words, the 
absolutely bounded, so neither can we think the infi- 
nitely unbounded ; for to follow out in thought, on the 
one hand, the ever-widening and growing whole until 
it shall have passed all bounds, and stand revealed to 
thought as the pure infinite, or, on the other hand, to 
follow out the ever-progressing division into parts 
smaller and still smaller, until in this direction also all 
bounds are passed, and the infinite is actually reached, 
would in either case require an infinite process of 
thought and an infinite time for that process. Thus 
neither the absolute nor the infinite, the positively 
limited nor the positively unlimited, can possibly be 
construed to thought or represented to the imagination. 

To this Schelling would reply : True, the under- 
standing cannot comprehend the infinite and absolute ; 
it knows only as it knows conditions and relations, only 



PHILOSOPHY OF SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON. 41 



by comparing and distinguishing and apprehending the 
differences and relations of objects. The absolute is 
one, complete, out of relation to any other object — 
cannot therefore be known by plurality and difference 
and relation, as the understanding knows. But there 
is a higher faculty than the understanding ; knowledge 
may transcend consciousness. To the higher reason 
stand revealed the infinite, the absolute, pure truth, 
things as they are in themselves. This cannot be 
comprehended by the understanding, for it lies beyond 
the sphere of that power ; it comes not within the 
consciousness, for consciousness supposes the distinction 
of subject and object — the mind knowing and the thing 
known ; while in the cognizance of the infinite this 
distinction vanishes, and the reason stands face to face 
with truth, nay, is one with the absolute. As exer- 
cising this divine faculty, man becomes one with God. 

It is a sufficient answer to this purely fanciful hypoth- 
esis to inquire how it is that we become aware of pos- 
sessing and exercising so remarkable a faculty. Of 
course, we are not conscious of it ; for by the supposi- 
tion it lies wholly beyond the sphere of consciousness. 
How, then, do we know it ? For, if not known at the 
time when it is called into exercise, how can it be 
remembered afterward ? We remember only that of 
which we have been conscious. 

If now Cousin and his followers seek to escape this 
difficulty by so modifying the theory of Schelling as to 
bring the knowledge of the absolute within the sphere 
of consciousness, it is only to fall into the contradiction 
of affirming that we know by the laws of the understand- 
ing that which can by no possibility come under those 
laws. The absolute is the complete, the universal ; and 



42 



STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY. 



as such it is absolutely one ; to affirm it is to deny all 
plurality and difference. But we know by conscious- 
ness and intelligence only as we distinguish subject 
and object, only as we discover plurality and difference. 
To know the absolute, then, by consciousness and the 
understanding, is to know that which is absolutely one 
by discovering in it plurality and difference ; in other 
words, by discovering it to be what it is not. 

Such, in substance, is the inexorable logic with which 
this remorseless antagonist pursues, through all space 
and beyond the habitable bounds of thought, the chi- 
mera of the possible knowledge, or even the possible 
conception, of the infinite and absolute. 1 

The application of this philosophy of the conditioned 
to theology, as regards especially our ideas of the Su- 
preme Being, is at once obvious and of the highest 
importance. As infinite and absolute, the God whom 
we worship is beyond the power of the human mind 
to comprehend or adequately conceive. " We must 
believe in the infinity of God; but the infinite God 
cannot by us, in the present limitation of our faculties, 
be comprehended or conceived. A deity understood 
would be no deity at all ; and it is blasphemy to say 
that God only is as we are able to think him to be. 
We know God according to the finitude of our facul- 
ties ; but we believe much that we are incompetent 
properly to know." 2 A God understood would be no 
God. He can be known only so far as he reveals him- 
self; known relatively, not absolutely and as he is in 
himself; and he can reveal himself only to and through 
the faculties with which he has seen fit to endow us. 
The limit of our faculties is the limit of all possible 

1 See note (B.) at the end of this Artioie. 2 Lectures, p. 531. 



PHILOSOPHY OF SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON. 43 

revelation of God to us. By no process of revelation 
can the finite be made to comprehend the absolute and 
the infinite. The drop can neither contain nor com- 
prehend the ocean. 

But has not God revealed himself to us as infinite 
and absolute ? He has made known to us the fact that 
he is so — a fact which it needs no special revelation to 
teach, since reason assures us that a finite God is no 
God ; but in making known to us the fact, he has not 
brought the infinite and absolute within our compre- 
hension. Reason and revelation both assure us that 
God is infinite ; but they do not enable us to compre- 
hend or grasp in thought the contents of that infinite. 
We know that God is ; but what he is we do not and 
cannot fully comprehend. We know that he is not 
finite, not dependent, but unlimited and absolute ; but 
how much is positively comprised under these negatives 
we cannot determine. It requires infinity to conceive 
infinity. Hence — and it is a significant fact — those 
who claim for man a knowledge of the infinite, have 
done so, usually, on the ground that the reason in man 
is part of and one with the divine reason, as Cousin ; 
or, still higher, that man is one and the same with the 
absolute, as Schelling. 

This doctrine of the conditioned may be styled the 
philosophy of ignorance rather than of wisdom ; a nes- 
cience rather than a science of God. But it is an 
ignorance which is itself the highest wisdom ; for, as 
Hamilton has well said, " the highest reach of human 
science is the scientific recognition of human ignorance : 
4 Qui nescit ignorare, ignorat scire.' " Well may we 
say with Grotius, " nescire quaedam magna pars sapien- 
tiae est," and with Scaliger, " sapientia est vera, nolle 



44 



STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY. 



nimis sapere." Such has been the testimony of the 
most learned and devout, from Chrysostom and Augus- 
tine downward. " There are two sorts of ignorance," 
says Hamilton ; " we philosophize to escape ignorance, 
and the consummation of our philosophy is ignorance ; 
we start from the one, we repose in the other ; they are 
the goals from which and to which we tend ; and the 
pursuit of knowledge is but a course between two igno- 
rances, as human life is itself only a travelling from 
grave to grave." 1 

A theology constructed on such principles and on 
such a basis must evidently be one of pre-eminent 
modesty and humility. It sets out with a confession 
of ignorance, and ends with a demonstration of the 
principle from which it sets out. It is a philosophy 
which " vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up." The 
God whom it recognizes, and whom it worships, is a 
God incomprehensible, and past finding out ; a God that 
hideth himself ; whom no man hath seen or can see ; 
dwelling in the light that no man can approach unto. 
The spirit of such a theology is one of deepest reverence 
and humility. Its language is, " Who, by searching, 
can find out God ; who can find out the Almighty to 
perfection ? Lo, these are parts of his ways ; but the 
thunder of his power who can understand ? " 

There are two lessons specially taught by the philoso- 
phy of the conditioned, as applied to theology; one is 
the impossibility of constructing, a priori, by reason 
alone, a science of God ; since, start from what point we 
will, we find ourselves baffled and thrown back in every 
attempt to approach the infinite ; and that not by acci- 
dent, but of necessity, from the demonstrated nature and 

1 Wight's Philosophy of Sir Wra. Hamilton, p. 517. 



PHILOSOPHY OF SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON. 45 

laws of human thought. The other is, that the difficul- 
ties which we find in theology belong equally to phi- 
losophy — are not peculiar to religion alone, nor to one 
system of religious belief exclusively, nor to revealed 
in distinction from natural theology, but to all systems 
alike, and to philosophy as much as to theology. If 
theology cannot tell us what God is in himself, but only 
as relative to our limited faculties, neither can philos- 
ophy tell us what anything is in itself, but only as 
relative to our faculties of knowing. If theology can- 
not explain to our comprehension everything which 
it would have us believe ; philosophy, too, requires us 
to take upon trust more than it can demonstrate, and 
to believe what we cannot understand. If theology 
recognizes in its divinity, a Being whom it cannot com- 
prehend ; philosophy has never yet found herself able 
to frame a conception of Deity that was self-consistent, 
not to say adequate and complete ; and that for the 
tame reason in either case — the inability of the human 
mind to form such a conception. 

It lias been objected to this philosophy that it makes 
the infinite a mere negation, thus ignoring and abolish- 
ing the highest object of thought to man. This is not 
so. It is not the infinite, but only our conception of 
the infinite which it pronounces negative. It is not the 
infinite, but only our comprehension of the infinite 
which it denies. That the infinite is, we know — that 
it is ; but not ivhat it is : every attempt to conceive it, 
lands us in a mere negation of the limited. The fol- 
lowing passage from Hansel well expresses the truth 
as to this point: "When we lift up our eyes to that 
blue vault of heaven, which is, itself, but the limit of 
our power of sight, we are compelled to suppose though 



46 



STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY. 



we cannot perceive, the existence of space beyond as 
well as within it ; we regard the boundary of vision as 
parting the visible from the invisible. And when in 
mental contemplation we are conscious of relation and 
difference as the limits of our power of thought, we 
regard them in like manner as the boundary between 
the conceivable and the inconceivable ; though we are 
unable to penetrate in thought beyond the nether sphere 
to the unrelated and unlimited which it hides from us. 
The absolute and the infinite are thus, like the incon- 
ceivable and the imperceptible, names indicating, not an 
object of thought or of consciousness at all, but the mere 
absence of the conditions under which consciousness is 
possible. The attempt to construct, in thought, an 
object answering to such names, necessarily results in 
contradiction ; a contradiction, however, which we have 
ourselves produced by the attempt to think ; which 
exists in the act of thought, but not beyond it ; which 
destroys the conception as such, but indicates nothing 
concerning the existence or non-existence of that which 
we try to conceive. It proves our own impotence, and 
it proves nothing more. Or, rather, it indirectly leads 
us to believe in the existence of that infinite which we 
cannot conceive ; for the denial of its existence includes 
a contradiction no less than the assertion of its con- 
ceivability. We thus learn that the provinces of reason 
and faith are not co-extensive ; that it is a duty, enjoined 
by reason itself, to believe in that which we are unable 
to comprehend. " 1 

It is objected to this philosophy that it leaves unrec- 
onciled the difficulties and contradictions which it 
finds in the attempt to conceive of the infinite ; thus 

1 Limits of Religious Thought, p. 110. 



PHILOSOPHY OF SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON. 47 

leaving reason and faith at hopeless variance. It allows 
the mind to fall back baffled and thwarted in every 
effort to form a consistent notion of the highest and 
most important objects of thought, and calls in faith 
to decide where reason is impotent. 

That it presents difficulties which it does not solve is 
true ; that it shows them to be inseparable from every 
attempt of the human mind to conceive the uncondi- 
tioned is also true. It leaves them unsolved ; but it 
shows them to be insolvable, and it tells us why they 
are so. But is any other system preferable in this 
respect ? Is it in the power of a different philosophy 
to remove the discrepancies and solve the difficulties 
of which it complains ? Suppose, with the disciples of 
a different school, we call in the aid of a higher power, 
which we call the reason, and place above the under- 
standing and in contrast with it, whose office and 
province it shall be to take cognizance of those higher 
truths which the logical understanding finds it impos- 
sible to comprehend. Have we thus got rid of the 
difficulties ? Are the contradictions reconciled ? Can 
we now understand the infinite, and comprehend the 
absolute ? Can we now conceive infinite duration, or 
yet the absolute beginning or absolute termination of 
existence ? Is it not just as difficult and impossible as 
before to comprehend or conceive these things ? Is it 
not evident that this new and higher power which we 
call the reason stands in precisely the same relation to 
the understanding and the other mental faculties that 
faith does in the other system ? " The logical under- 
standing is out of its sphere when it undertakes to 
grasp the higher truth," says the transcendentalist ; 
u that is the province of reason ; hence difficulties and 



48 



STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY. 



contradictions." " The human intelligence is out of 
its sphere when it undertakes to grasp the uncondi- 
tioned," says Hamilton ; " that is the province of faith ; 
hence difficulties and contradictions." The question is 
now, which of these two shall charge the other with 
leaving difficulties and contradictions unreconciled? 
In either system there is presented to the mind what 
it is admitted we cannot understand. In the one case 
it is presented as an object of knowledge ; in the other, 
of faith. 

And how is this higher faculty of reason to know 
what it is out of the power of the logical understanding 
to conceive ? Is it a power above consciousness ? 
Then how do we know that we have such a power? 
If within the sphere of consciousness, then it is, of 
course, subject to the laws of consciousness ; it must 
be governed in its operation by the ordinary laws of 
thought. Thought has its fixed laws, and in all our 
thinking we must and do observe them. Take the idea 
of the infinite, which is claimed as the special preroga- 
tive and province of reason. Is it not a thought, a 
conception ? And as such, is it not subject to the laws 
which govern all our thinking ? .Can we, for example, 
conceive the infinite to be and not to be at the same 
time ? Or can we conceive that it neither is, nor yet 
is not ? And what have we here but the principles of 
contradiction and excluded middle, which are laws of 
the logical understanding? Is it not evident that if 
we think at all we must think in accordance with these 
laws ? Yet the logical understanding, we are told, is 
wholly out of its sphere when it undertakes to grasp 
the infinite. Pray how is the reason to make known 
to us, then, this terra incognita? Is this higher fac- 



PHILOSOPHY OF SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON. 49 

ulty so above and in contrast with tlie understanding 
as to set aside the universal and fixed laws of thought? 
But it is precisely these laws that create the difficulty 
and impossibility of conceiving the infinite and absolute. 

To revert to the original objection, that faith and 
reason are left at variance by the doctrine of the con- 
ditioned. It should be remarked that the discrepancy 
is not between faith and reason, but between reason 
and reason, between one conception and another of 
the human mind. The difficulty is not how to believe 
what we cannot adequately comprehend, but how to 
reconcile our disagreeing conceptions ; how to reconcile 
our idea of God as a being and a person with our idea 
of him as infinite ; how to conceive of him as absolute, 
and yet as cause ; how to conceive of the infinite as 
distinct from and co-existing with the finite, yet not 
limited by it. These, and such as these, are the diffi- 
culties ; and they are difficulties which the reason (so 
called) does not escape, nor the philosophy of the abso- 
lute, in any of its forms, help us to solve. 

But the difficulty, it is further objected, is the same 
for faith as for the intellect ; for the faculty of believ- 
ing as for the faculty of knowing and conceiving. If 
we cannot know nor even conceive the infinite, then we 
certainly cannot believe it; since it is impossible, to 
believe what we have no conception of. True, we 
reply, we cannot believe what we have no conception 
of ; but we may and do believe what we do not com- 
prehend, and what we have no positive conception of. 
I believe in the immortality of the soul ; but exactly 
what that immortality comprises I do not know. I 
may believe that a given object, a, possesses an un- 
known quality, x, and yet of the value of x I may 

4 



50 



STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY. 



have no conception whatever. I believe that space is 
infinite ; but I do not and cannot conceive what the 
infinite comprises, nor represent to myself infinite space 
as a positive object of thought. My conception of it is 
merely negative — it is the w/ilimited, the non-finite. 

The precise relation of faith to understanding in the 
philosophy of the conditioned seems to be misappre- 
hended in some cases : one, at least, of the recent 
reviewers has represented that philosophy as placing 
the foundations of our faith in the processes of the 
logical understanding. This is entirely a misapprehen- 
sion. Our belief of the divine existence is not, in that 
system, made to rest upon the logical fact that, of two 
contradictions one must be true, and therefore there 
must be an infinite or an absolute, neither of which 
can, however, be conceived. This is not made the 
foundation of our faith, but is simply brought in as 
confirmatory of it, as showing that philosophy has 
nothing, at least, to say against it. Our faith is uni- 
formly represented as resting on entirely another basis, 
viz. on the religious consciousness, the moral na- 
ture of man. The consciousness of dependence, the 
consciousness of moral obligation, the consciousness 
that we are actually living under a law, and that 
where there is law there is and must be a lawgiver — 
these are the grand facts of man's moral nature; and 
they constitute the actual and sufficient foundation of 
his faith in the existence of a Supreme Being. To this 
faith scepticism may object : You believe in that which 
you cannot conceive. To this philosophy replies : True ; 
but you are obliged to believe many things which you 
cannot conceive ; and then, again, the opposite of what 
you believe is equally inconceivable. If you cannot 



PHILOSOPHY OF Sm WILLIAM HAMILTON. 



51 



conceive God as infinite, neither can you conceive him 
as finite. If you cannot conceive him as without be- 
ginning of days or end of years, neither can you con- 
ceive him as beginning to exist or as ceasing to be. If 
you cannot conceive absolute creation, neither can you 
conceive an infinite series of finite changes. Yet of 
these two opposites, one must be true. Philosophy 
thus confirms our belief, by showing that reason can 
bring no valid objection against it. It removes obstacles, 
and leaves the coast clear for the operations of the 
higher and positive principle of faith. 

The principles thus maintained by Hamilton, in what 
has been termed the philosophy of the conditioned, are 
assumed by Professor Mansel, in his celebrated Bampton 
Lectures, as the basis and starting-point of his treatise. 
Planting himself on these principles he proceeds to 
carry them out to their legitimate results, as against 
rationalism in its various forms, sceptic and dogmatic, 
which would make reason the arbiter of revelation ; or, 
setting aside revelation altogether, would construct 
from the principles of reason alone a pure and a priori 
science of God. He shows that the pretensions of such 
a system are altogether baseless and absurd ; that 
reason has no such knowledge of the divine nature 
as can constitute the foundation of an independent or 
rational theology ; that, on the contrary, its fundamental 
principles and conceptions are self-contradictory and 
irreconcilable with each other ; and that from the very 
nature of the human mind, its inability to conceive the 
unconditioned, this must be the case. The fundamental 
conceptions of any system of rationalistic theology are, 
and must be, the notion of the absolute, the infinite 
and first cause. These it must combine in its concep- 



52 



STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY. 



tion of Deity. He must be infinite, that is, free from 
all possible limitation ; he must be absolute, that is, 
existing in and by himself, without necessary relation 
to any other being ; he must be first cause, that is, the 
producer of all things — himself produced of none. 
But how are these three elements or notions to be com- 
bined ? Are they not incongruous ? Cause is always 
relative to effect ; the absolute, on the contrary, is that 
which is out of all relation. How is the absolute to 
pass over into the relative, the infinite to give rise to 
the finite ? And how can the finite and the infinite 
co-exist ? Pantheism or atheism is the logical and in- 
evitable result : the one sacrificing the finite to save 
the infinite ; the other, the infinite to save the finite. 
But even here w r e find no resting place ; for if we deny 
the existence of the finite, we deny our own existence, 
and what then becomes of all our reasoning ? If we 
deny the infinite, we find it equally impossible to con- 
ceive the absolute beginning in time, or absolute lim- 
itation in space, if the finite. Thus, from whatever 
side it may be viewed, the rationalistic conception of 
the infinite is seen to be encompassed with contradic- 
tions. We can neither, without contradiction, conceive 
it to exist, nor not to exist ; as one, nor yet as many ; 
as personal, nor yet as impersonal ; as conscious, nor 
as unconscious ; as producing effects, nor as inactive. 
The conclusion is, that reason is incompetent, of herself, 
to construct a theology, and is not to be taken as the 
guide and determiner of faith. Foiled thus in the 
attempt to grasp the absolute nature of the Divine Being, 
Professor Mansel proceeds to show, by an examination 
of the nature and laws of the human mind, whence the 
failure results, and why every such attempt necessarily 



PHILOSOPHY OF SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON. 



53 



must prove a failure : that thought is not, and cannot 
be, the measure of existence ; that the contradictions 
which meet us at every step in the endeavor to conceive 
the infinite arise, not from the nature of the object 
which we seek to conceive, but from the constitution 
of the mind conceiving. 

Thought is possible only by means of definite con- 
ceptions. All thought is, by its very nature, a limitation ; 
all knowledge or consciousness implies limitation. It 
is the apprehension or conception of a thing in some 
one definite form or aspect ; of something in particular, 
and not of things in general. It is the determination 
of the mind to one actual, out of many possible, mod- 
ifications. But the infinite is not to be shut up within 
these limits. The infinite is the wholly unlimited. Of 
course, then, we cannot possibly conceive it. To speak 
of knowing or conceiving the infinite is to speak of 
defining, bounding, limiting the unlimited. Nor can 
the absolute be conceived without equal contradiction. 
Any object of thought, as conceived, stands in relation 
to the mind that conceives ; is brought into that relation 
by the very act of conception. But the absolute is that 
which is out of all relation. When conceived, or 
brought into relation, it is no longer absolute. It does 
not follow from this that the absolute and infinite do 
not exist, but only that we cannot conceive them as 
existing. 1 

All human knowledge or consciousness, again, is 
subject to the law of time, under the forms of succession 
and duration. Whatever object or existence we are 
conscious of, we are conscious of as succeeding in time 

1 See note (C.) at the end of this Article. 



54 



STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY. 



to some former object of thought or knowledge, and as 
itself occupying time ; nor can we conceive it other- 
wise. But that which is successive is finite, limited by 
that which has gone before and that which is coming 
after. And that which is continuous is also finite ; for 
continuous existence is existence divisible into succes- 
sive moments made up of successive portions, each, of 
course, finite. It follows that, unless we can escape 
this law of thought, and for once think out of time, no 
object of human thought can adequately represent the 
true nature of an infinite Being. Hence it is, also, that 
we cannot conceive or construe to thought an act of crea- 
tion, in the strict sense of the term — an absolutely first 
link in the chain of existence, an absolutely first moment 
or beginning of anything in time, nor yet of time itself. 
On the other hand, an infinite succession in time is 
equally inconceivable. We can neither conceive an 
infinite duration of finite changes, nor yet an existence 
prior to duration ? 

Personality, also, implies limitation. All our notions 
of personality are derived from our own, which is rela- 
tive and limited. The thought and the thinker are 
relative to each other, and are distinguished from each 
other. A person is a definite object, one being out of 
many. " To speak of an absolute and infinite person, 
is simply to use language to which, however true it 
may be in a superhuman sense, no mode of human 
thought can possibly attach itself" (p. 103). Whatever 
we separate in thought from other things, and distin- 
guish from other objects, becomes to us, by that very act, 
a definite object, limited, conditioned ; and to apply to 
any such object the term infinite is to affirm and deny 
in the same breath. We cannot apply the term, there- 



PHILOSOPHY OF. SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON. 55 



fore, to any definite and positive object of thought. To 
say that any object or attribute or form is infinite, is to 
say that the same thing, at one and the same moment, 
is both finite and infinite. 

Shall we then, with the pantheist, deny the person- 
ality of God ; or, with the atheist, his infinity ? By no 
means, either, We must think him personal ; we must 
think him infinite. True, we cannot reconcile the two 
representations ; but the impossibility and apparent 
contradiction may not exist anywhere but in our own 
minds ; they do not necessarily pertain to the nature 
of God. " The apparent contradiction in this case, as 
in those previously noticed, is the necessary consequence 
of an attempt on the part of the human thinker to 
transcend the boundaries of his consciousness. It 
proves that there are limits to man's power of thought ; 
and it proves no more " (p. 106). 

The work of Professor Mansel has awakened atten- 
tion and called forth criticism in no ordinary degree. 
It has been, reviewed, sometimes sharply, sometimes 
vaguely, seldom with approbation — sometimes with, 
but oftener apparently without, a clear perception of the 
design of the treatise and the principles on which it is 
based — in most of the quarterlies, the leading secular 
and religious journals, and in special treatises. We have 
to do with the work, at this time, only in so far as it is 
founded upon, and a development of, the philosophy of the 
conditioned, in its application to theology. Whatever 
may be the special merits or defects of Professor Mansel's 
treatise, we cannot but regard the principles on which 
it is based as fundamentally correct, and of the highest 
importance to theology as well as to philosophy. The 
philosophy of the absolute — the dream that by reason 



56 



STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY. 



alone, independently of revelation, man can find out 
God, can find out the Almighty to perfection ; that the 
mind of man is capable of comprehending, not phenom- 
ena only, but things as they are in themselves ; of 
transcending the limits which consciousness and the 
laws of thought impose, and conversing, face to face, 
with unveiled truth and the most august realities — 
this philosophy, in one or another of its several lorms, 
lies at the basis of the most prevalent and most dan- 
gerous errors in science and in religion. It is the 
essence of rationalism, the root of pantheism, of scepti- 
cism, and infidelity. These false systems can be met only 
by a return to first principles, a careful searching out, 
and building upon, the right foundation in philosophy. 
We may discard metaphysical speculation as much as 
we please ; but the thinking world will continue to 
speculate, and on its false theories of philosophy will 
build false systems of religious belief, which we can 
successfully encounter only by showing that the foun- 
dations on which they rest are radically false. To do 
this in respect to the errors named we must fall back 
upon the philosophy of the conditioned. 

Many of the objections which have been brought 
against the treatise of Professor Mansel are such as lie 
against the philosophy of the conditioned in general ; 
and, as such, have been already considered. It has 
been urged, however, and with apparent force, against 
this work, by those who would probably accept in the 
main the principles of that philosophy, that it is based 
upon a false idea of what the infinite really denotes. 
In the sense in which it is employed by Professor 
Mansel, the term infinite stands for the absolutely 
unlimited. The reasoning proceeds on that postulate. 



PHILOSOPHY OF SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON. 57 

But while it is easy to show that we cannot conceive of 
God as infinite in that sense, since to conceive is, with 
us, to distinguish one thing from another, and that is 
to limit, in our thought, the object conceived, it does 
not follow that in some other sense (the sense commonly 
attached to the term) we may not be able to conceive of 
him. 

Whatever may be the strict philosophical meaning of 
the term infinite, it is evident that in its common 
theological use, as applied to Deity, we employ it in a 
sense different from that now mentioned. To call any 
being or thing infinite, in the sense of wholly unlimited, 
is to bring together contradictory ideas \ for a being or 
thing is a limited object, one out of, or in distinction 
from, many ; something definite, and therefore the oppo- 
site of the infinite. Yet we do and must think and 
speak of God as infinite. What do we understand, 
then, by the term as thus employed ? Not, surely, the 
sum of all existence, the to irav or to 6\ov, the abso- 
lute whole of things ; but, on the contrary, a Being 
who, out of himself, finds no limits ; none save such as 
his own being and nature necessarily suppose ; none 
save those implied in the very term and idea of being. 
We mean that his duration is unlimited, his power 
unlimited, his every attribute and perfection unlimited ; 
in a word, that there is none greater, and that he him- 
self cannot be greater by the addition of any quality or 
attribute which he does not already possess. This is 
the idea we form of God when we think of him and 
speak of him as infinite ; and in this there is involved 
no contradiction. Still our thought, even in the modi- 
fied sense now given, is not a positive, but only a 
negative conception : we do not represent to ourselves 



58 



STUDIES IX PHILOSOPHY. 



as a positive object of thought, much less do we 
comprehend, this infinity of the Divine Being. We 
approach it only by negations, and we express it accord- 
ingly. We cannot positively think the infinite, but we 
can refuse to think the finite ; and this we do when we 
say God is infinite. 

In the sense now intended, we can apply the term 
infinite to God without any contradiction ; can speak 
and think of him as a Being, for he is a Being ; as a 
Person, for he is a Person ; can distinguish hiin, in 
thought, from other beings and things, from the created 
worlds, from Gabriel, from Satan, for he is distinct ; 
can conceive him, therefore, as a definite, personal 
existence, possessing intellect, sensibilities, and will. 
Now, in the strict philosophical sense all these terms 
and conceptions are so many limitations and conditions ; 
and, as such, are contradictory of the infinite ; but in 
the sense commonly attached to that term they involve 
no such contradiction. 

It must be remarked, in justification of the use which 
Mr. Mansel makes of the term, that it is the sense in 
which it is employed in the several systems which he is 
combating, and therefore very naturally and properly 
thus employed by him. In the rational and transcen- 
dental schemes which claim for man the power to 
know the infinite, and the absolute, these terms (not 
distinguished and contrasted, as with Hamilton) denote 
the wholly unlimited and unrelated — the sum of all 
reality. This is the sense attached to the terms by 
Kant, Wolfe, Spinoza, Hegel, and the rationalists gene- 
rally. " The metaphysical representation of the Deity 
as absolute and infinite must necessarily, as the pro- 
foundest metaphysicians have acknowledged, amount to 



PHILOSOPHY OF SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON. 59 



nothing less than the sum of all reality : 4 What kind 
of an absolute being is that,' says Hegel, ' which does 
not contain in itself all that is actual, even evil 
included ? ' " 

Now it is certainly competent for a critic to hold 
those whose opinions he controverts to their own use 
of terms, and that strictly ; and to show that, employing 
the terms as they do in the present instance, it is 
impossible to the human mind to form any conception 
of God as infinite and absolute. As against the systems 
of rational theology based on the philosophy of the 
absolute, which he was controverting, we regard the 
argument of Professor Mansel as valid. Taking their 
own definitions, he shows that it is impossible for man 
to conceive of the infinite and absolute in the way 
they intend ; and that every attempt to do this leads to 
inevitable confusion and absurdity. 

The philosophy of the conditioned has been thus far 
considered with special reference to the ideas of the 
infinite and absolute. It applies, also, to the idea of 
cause. But here we must be brief. We are under the 
necessity of thinking, not merely that any given event 
that may come under our notice has a cause, but that 
every event has, and must have one. This we call the 
law of causality. We cannot represent to ourselves 
the possibility of the opposite : the occurrence of any 
event whatever without a cause. But why, and whence, 
this peculiarity of mental action ? Is it an express and 
positive datum of intelligence that every event must 
have a cause ; or is it merely the result of our inability 
to think the unconditioned ? The former is the usual 
answer ; Hamilton affirms the latter. 

" We cannot know, we cannot think a thing, except 



60 



STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY. 



under the attribute of existence; we cannot know or 
think a thing to exist, except as in time ; and we can- 
not know or think a thing to exist in time, and think it 
absolutely to commence. Now this at once imposes on 
us the judgment of causality. 

" An object is presented to our observation which has 
phenomenally begun to be. But we cannot construe it 
to thought that the object, that is, this determinate com- 
plement of existence, had no being at any past moment ; 
because, in that case, once thinking it as existent, we 
should, again, think it as non-existent, which is, for us, 
impossible. What, then, can we do — must we do? 
That the phenomenon presented to us did, as a phe- 
nomenon, begin to be, this we know by experience ; but 
that the elements of its existence only began when 
the phenomenon which they constitute came into mani- 
fested being, this we are wholly unable to think. In 
these circumstances, how do we proceed ? There is 
for us only one possible way : we are compelled to 
believe that the object (that is, the certain grade and 
quantum of being), whose phenomenal rise into exist- 
ence we have witnessed, did really exist prior to this 
rise under other forms. But to say that a thing 
previously existed under different forms is only to say, 
in other words, that a thing had causes " 1 

According to this view all apparent commencement 
of existence must be conceived as merely the evolution 
of being out of some previous into some new form or 
mode of existence, the whole quantum of being remain- 
ing as before. We can neither conceive the absolute 
creation nor the absolute annihilation of any form or 
atom of existence ; cannot conceive an atom absolutely 

1 Discussions, 581-583. 



PHILOSOPHY OF SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON. 61 



added to, or absolutely taken from, existence in general. 
" We are able to conceive, indeed, the creation of the 
world-; this, indeed, as easily as the creation of an atom. 
But what is our thought of creation ? It is not a 
thought of the mere springing of nothing into some- 
thing. On the contrary, creation is conceived, and is by 
us conceivable, only as the evolution of existence from 
possibility into actuality by the fiat of the Deity. Let 
us place ourselves, in imagination, at its very crisis. 
Now can we construe it to thought that the moment 
after the universe flashed into material reality, into 
manifested being, there was a larger complement of 
existence in the universe and its Author together than 
the moment before there subsisted in the Deity alone ? 
This we are unable to imagine. And what is true of 
our concept of creation holds of our concept of annihila- 
tion. We can think no real annihilation, no absolute 
sinking of something into nothing." 1 

To this view of causality, several objections occur. 
Not to mention the apparently pantheistic nature of the 
theory of creation thus presented, Deity being the sum 
of existence, and evolving from himself the material 
universe, so that what is now diffused in space, under 
the various forms of matter, was once virtually con- 
tained in him, who is thus the One and All of the ancient 
philosophies : it may be questioned whether the theory, 
even if conceded, furnishes a complete explanation of 
the law of causality. It accounts for the apparent 
production of existence, but not for the occurence of 
change ; whereas, the law of causality applies to all 
change of being, and not merely to the production of 
being. The apparent production is resolved into change, 

1 Discussions, p. 582. 



62 



STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY. 



and the difficulty is thus thrown back one step ; but 
how shall we account for this change ? This, too, 
requires a cause. The ice which presents itself to day 
where was water yesterday is no new existence, we are 
told, but only the same thing under another form. 
This we can readily believe. But how came the trans- 
formation ? What produced the change ? An oak 
stands to-day, towering in its majesty and strength, 
where once an acorn fell. A process of evolution and 
development has been slowly going on there for a cen- 
tury. Taking to itself whatsoever it needed of carbon, 
oxygen, or other element, from earth, air, water, and the 
sunbeam, this little germ has evolved, and built itself 
up into the stately form before us. There is no new 
material there, nothing which did not, under some 
other form, previously exist. But whence, we instinct- 
ively ask, originated this mysterious process of evolution, 
and what set it on foot ? This is the real question of 
causality in the case. It is no answer to this question 
to say that the elements which now compose the tree 
previously existed under some other form ; that all 
apparent beginning is merely evolution of being: the 
evolution is the very thing to be accounted for. 

Again, it may be objected to this theory, that to 
resolve the law of causality into mere impotence of 
thought seems to leave open to question the validity of 
that law, and of the conclusions based upon it. It is a 
weakness of our minds that leads us to conceive that 
every event must have a cause; it is because we can- 
not think the absolute beginning of anything. If it 
were not for that, if we could but construe it to thought 
that the apparent commencement of existence is a real 
beginning, there would be no necessity for this so-called 



PHILOSOPHY OF SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON. 



68 



law. Now it may be that this impotence of the human 
faculties is not the measure and standard of reality. 
The fact that we cannot conceive the absolute com- 
mencement in time of any portion of existence does 
not prove such a commencement impossible, since, by 
the very philosophy of the conditioned, some things are 
conceded to be true which we cannot conceive ; nay, 
we find it equally impossible to think the counter prop- 
osition of infinite duration, which we must maintain 
if one hold to a first Cause of all things, or even to 
an infinite series of determined causes. Does our in- 
ability to conceive infinite duration prove that also 
to be impossible? If so, what becomes of our law of 
causality ? 

And this leads us to remark that we fail to perceive 
any reason for the choice of alternative, so far as this 
theory of causality is concerned. The alternative is 
the absolute commencement or infinite non-commence- 
ment of existence. Existence takes its rise in time, 
causeless, groundless, springing from nothing into being, 
or else in some form it has always been. The question 
is, which ? One or the other of these counter propo- 
sitions is and must be true. The former is inconceivable, 
says Hamilton : we cannot think existence out of being, 
in either direction, future or past : cannot think that 
which has actual existence to have ever had absolutely 
no existence in any form ; and so we conclude the 
latter to be the true supposition. But is the latter any 
less inconceivable ? Can we more easily construe it to 
thought that a thing shall always have existed than 
that it shall begin to exist ? Can we conceive infinite 
duration ? By the very first principles of the philo- 
sophy of the conditioned, we cannot. Why, then, should 



64 



STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY. 



we reject the first form of the alternative on the ground 
of its inconceivability, rather than the other, on the 
same ground ? Why is it that,- practically, all men 
decide in favor of the latter of the two counter proposi- 
tions, both and equally inconceivable ? There must be 
a reason for this universal decision of the human mind. 
Logic can show no reason — she declares that one or 
the other must be true ; but which she knows not, cares 
not. It is extra-logical, purely psychological, this uni- 
form and universal choice of alternative. The theory 
which resolves causality into the inability to conceive 
the unconditioned seems to us to leave unexplained 
this great psychological fact. 

With all deference to the authority of Sir William 
Hamilton, and while fully accepting the philosophy of 
the conditioned in its general principles, we question its 
applicability to the law of cause. If, however, it is thus 
applied, would it not have been more in accordance 
with his own system, and witli the demands of the 
argument, to have presented it in a somewhat modified 
form ? We can neither conceive the absolute com- 
mencement, nor yet the infinite non-commencement, 
that is, infinite duration, of existence ; yet, by the law 
of excluded middle, one or the other of these contra- 
dictory propositions must be true. Being must abso- 
lutely commence, or being, in some form, must always 
have existed. In this dilemma observation comes to 
our aid, and assures us that the apparent beginnings 
which take place around us, and which at first would 
seem to favor the supposition of absolute commence- 
ment of existence, are invariably grounded in some- 
thing lying back of, and giving rise to, these changes ; 
look where we will, we find no such thing as absolute 



PHILOSOPHY OF SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON. 



65 



beginning, but always and everywhere the reverse ; and 
thus the scale which, in the hand of simple logic, had 
hung in even balance turns now in favor of the 
proposition, that being, in some form, must always 
have existed ; in other words, that nothing is un- 
caused. 

The philosophy of the conditioned is applied, also, to 
the idea of freedom. Few words must here suffice. In- 
asmuch as we cannot conceive the absolute commence- 
ment of anything, independent, that is, of all previous 
existence, we cannot, consequently, conceive a cause 
not itself caused. The will is regarded as a cause ; 
but, for the reason just stated, it cannot be conceived as 
an original independent or free cause, a cause which is 
not itself an effect ; for this would be to conceive an 
absolute origination. But a cause which is conditioned, 
determined to its action by other causes or influences, 
is not a free cause, or a free will. Freedom is, there- 
fore, inconceivable. But so, likewise, is its opposite, 
necessity ; for it is equally impossible to conceive an 
infinite non-commencement, an infinite series of condi- 
tioned causes, which the latter scheme supposes. Yet, 
by the laws of thought, of these contradictions, both 
inconceivable, one must be true — the will must be 
free, or not free. In this dilemma comes in human 
consciousness, and throws her casting-vote in favor of 
freedom. We know that we are free, though we can- 
not conceive how. 

" We are unable to conceive an absolute commence- 
ment ; we cannot, therefore, conceive a free volition. 
A determination by motives cannot, to our understand- 
ing, escape from necessitation. Nay, were we even to 
admit as true what we cannot think as possible, still 



66 



STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY. 



the doctrine of a motionless volition would be only 
casualism ; and the free acts of an indifferent are, mor- 
ally and rationally, as worthless as the pre-ordered pas- 
sions of a determined will. How, therefore, I repeat, 
moral liberty is possible, in man or God, we are utterly 
unable, speculatively, to understand. But practically 
to feel that we are free, is given to us in the conscious- 
ness of an uncompromising law of duty, in the con- 
sciousness of our moral accountability ; and this fact 
of liberty cannot be redargued on the ground that it is 
incomprehensible ; for the philosophy of the conditioned 
proves, against the necessitarian, that things there are 
which may, nay must, be true, of which the under- 
standing is wholly unable to construe to itself the pos- 
sibility. 

" But this philosophy is not only competent to defend 
the fact of our moral liberty, possible though incon- 
ceivable, against the assault of the fatalist ; it retorts, 
against hknself, the very objection of incomprehensi- 
bility by which the fatalist bad thought to triumph over 
the libertarian. For, while fatalism is a recoil from the 
more obtrusive inconceivability of an absolute com- 
mencement, on the fact of which commencement the 
doctrine of liberty proceeds, the fatalist is shown to 
overlook the equal but less obtrusive inconceivability 
of an infinite non-commencement, on the assertion of 
which non-commencement his own doctrine of necessity 
must ultimately rest. As equally unthinkable, the two 
counter, the two one-sided, schemes are thus theoret- 
ically balanced. But practically our consciousness of 
the moral law, which without a moral liberty in man 
would be a mendacious imperative, gives a decisive pre- 
ponderance to the doctrine of freedom over the doctrine 



PHILOSOPHY OF SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON. G7 

of fate. We are free in act if we are accountable for 
our action s." 1 

The only question we should raise respecting this 
argument relates to the idea of freedom here implied : 
Is it essential to a free volition that it be a volition un- 
determined by motives ? Is a motiveless will the only 
free will ? It seems to us that too much is here con- 
ceded to the necessitarian. Grant him this, and noth- 
ing is easier than for him to show that no such thing as 
freedom exists, or can exist, in heaven or on earth. 
Freedom becomes not only inconceivable, but inijjossible, 
on this ground. Neither man nor God possesses any 
such freedom. To the divine mind, its own nature and 
the eternal fitness of things are a law ; and by this law 
its action is conditioned. That infinite abhorrence of 
evil which dwells ever in the divine mind and shapes its 
action, is not itself without a cause. And as to man, 
who does not know that his choices are influenced and 
determined by a thousand varying circumstances ; that 
his very nature, be it what it may, is an ever-present 
and powerful influence upon his will ; that his reason 
and moral sense, whether coinciding with or counter- 
acting the impulses of that nature, act also as deter- 
mining influences ; so that the actual volitions of man 
are never absolute originations of the will, for which 
no reason exists, no ground of their being, out of the 
mere faculty of willing ; but, on the contrary, when we 
choose, it is always in view of something which influ- 
ences the choice, and which is -the reason or ground 
why we choose as we do. Nor is it possible to choose 
under other circumstances. Absolute indifference is 
incompatible with choice. Where there is no pref- 

i Wight's Philosophy of Sir William Hamilton, pp. 508-512. 



m 



STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY. 



ference, there is no choice ; and where no choice, no 
volition. 

Such a freedom as is here supposed is, then, not 
merely inconceivable, but is neither actual nor possible, 
whether to God or man. And, accordingly, this is not 
the freedom for which consciousness gives her casting- 
vote, when called to decide the vexed question of the 
will. We are conscious of freedom, but not of the sort 
of freedom now intended. We know that we are free ; 
but we also know that our choices are influenced by 
motives. 

While, then, we fully admit the impossibility of con- 
ceiving, on the one hand, a cause not itself caused, and, 
on the other, an infinite series of determined causes, 
we cannot adopt the idea of freedom here implied, nor 
concede that a will under the influence of motives is, 
for that reason, not a free will. 



PHILOSOPHY OF SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON. 



69 



NOTES. 



Note A. — Page 10. 

To his honor be it said, no one was more ready to acknowledge 
that ability, and do honor to his antagonist, than Victor Cousin 
himself. When, subsequently, Hamilton became a competitor with 
Combe, and many other candidates, for the chair of Logic and 
Metaphysics in Edinburgh, Cousin interested himself to secure his 
appointment. In a letter written for that purpose to a friend of his 
in Scotland, he speaks in the highest terms of Hamilton's qualifica- 
tions for that office. A paragraph or two we are tempted to subjoin 
as showing Cousin's estimate of the man. 

After speaking of the deferences of their respective systems, and 
of Sir William Hamilton as of all men in Europe the acknowledged 
defender and representative of the Scotch philosophy, by his invalu- 
able articles in the Edinburgh Review, and noticing particularly 
the article above referred to, as civil in form but severe in sub- 
stance, and the most weighty of anything that had been written in 
criticism of his views, he goes on to say : " It is not I who would 
solicit Scotland in behalf of Mr. Hamilton, it is Scotland herself 
who should honor with her suffrage him who, since Dugald Stewart, 
alone represents her in Europe. 

" In fact that which characterizes Mr. Hamilton is precisely the 
Scotch spirit, and if he is devoted to the philosophy of Reid and 
Stewart, it is only because that philosophy is the Scottish spirit itself 
applied to metaphysics. Mr. Hamilton never strays from the high 
road of common sense ; and at the same time he has much genius 
and sagacity ; and I assure you (I know it by experience) that his 
logic is by no means convenient to his antagonist. Inferior to Reid 
in invention and originality, and to Stewart in grace and delicacy, 
he is perhaps superior to both, and certainly to the latter, in rigor 
of dialectic, and I will add in extent of erudition. Mr. Hamilton 
knows all systems, ancient and modern, and his critique of them is 
after the true Scottish spirit. His independence is equal to his 
learning. He is specially eminent in logic. I will speak here as a 



70 



STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY. 



man of the trade. Be assured that Mr. Hamilton is the man of all 
your countrymen who best understands Aristotle, and if there is in 
the three realms of his Britannic Majesty a chair of Logic vacant, 
hesitate not ; hasten to bestow it on Mr. Hamilton 

" In fine, my dear sir, if it savor not too much of pretention and 
arrogance on my part, I beseech you to say in my name, to those on 
whom depends this nomination, that they hold perhaps in their hands 
the philosophic future of Scotland ; and that it is a stranger, exempt 
from all spirit of party and clique who earnestly entreats them to 
remember that it is for them to give a successor to Tteid and Stew- 
art ; and that in a matter of such importance they will not disregard 
the opinion of Europe 

" I know not who are Mr. Hamilton's competitors, but I rejoice 
for Scotland if there is one who has received from disinterested 
strangers, conversant with these matters, the like public eulogium. 

" Adieu, my dear sir, etc. V. Cousin." 

"Paris, June 1, 1836." 

The original may be found in the preface to M. Peisse's " Frag- 
ments de Philosophic, par W. Hamilton." It were difficult to say 
whether this letter, so generous in its estimate of a philosophical 
opponent, reflects higher credit upon Hamilton or upon Cousin him- 
self. Letters of a similar nature, it may here be remarked, were on 
the same occasion placed before the Council of Patrons, from eigh- 
teen savans and men of letters of all nations — a fact which shows 
the impression already made upon the cultivated mind of Europe 
by the genius of Hamilton. 

Note B. — Page 42. 

It should be remarked that Hamilton carefully distinguishes, as 
those with whom he contends do not, between the absolute and the 
infinite. With Kant, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, Cousin, and the 
philosophers of the transcendental class generally, the terms absolute 
and infinite are used, not as opposed to each other, but to denote in 
general that which is wholly unconditioned. With Hamilton the 
absolute is the unconditionally limited, — the whole, complete — cor- 
responding to the to oAov of Aristotle. The infinite on the other hand 
is the wholly unlimited. The one is, with him, the direct opposite 
of the other ; the one affirming, the other denying, limitation. 



PHILOSOPHY OF SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON. 71 



It may here be remarked that Professor Mansel, of whom we shall 
have occasion presently to speak, uses the term absolute, not in the 
strict sense of Hamilton as opposed to the infinite, but in the more 
general sense of the transcendental philosophers, as denoting that 
which is out of all necessary relation — the opposite of the necessa- 
rily relative. 

Note C — Page 53. 

Does not the difficulty, so far as it lies in the reasons now assigned, 
pertain to the divine mind, as much as to the human ? To conceive 
is to limit. To know is to distinguish one thing from another ; and 
all distinction is limitation. But is this a peculiarity of human 
thinking and human knowing ? In the act of self-knowledge or 
self-consciousness does not God distinguish himself from other objects 
— the Creator from the created ; the infinite from the finite ; self 
from not-self? Does he not distinguish between himself and Gabriel 
or Satan ? But this is to limit himself. On the other hand, not 
thus to distinguish is to regard himself as the universal whole — and 
absolute pantheism results. 

Is it replied the divine knowledge and consciousness are different 
from the human, and therefore may involve no limitation ? That 
may be. But if the divine consciousness so far differs from the 
human as not to distinguish self from not-self, the infinite from the 
finite ; then, whatever else it may be, it certainly is not self-knowl- 
edge or self-consciousness. If it does thus distinguish, then in so 
doing it involves limitation, in the same way and for the same reason 
that human consciousness does. 

It is not without reason, then, that the philosophy of the absolute 
in its purest form denies consciousness, personality, and intelligence 
to the infinite. The denial is a logical necessity from the premises. 
The distance from pantheism to atheism is the distance from premise 
to conclusion. The infinite, in the sense of the absolutely unlimited 
is in truth the pure nothing of Hegel. To predicate any quality, 
any attribute, any substance even, of this infinite nothing, is to limit 
it. The moment it becomes something it becomes definite, no longer 
infinite. 

Is then the Deity to himself unknown, to himself an enigma and 
a blank ? Or shall we conclude that the idea of the infinite in the 
sense of the absolutely unlimited, does not pertain to the true con- 
ception of Deity ? 



II. 



MILL VERSUS HAMILTON. 1 

Two conflicting systems of philosophy are contending 
at the present day for the mastery in Great Britain and 
America. The issues are by no means unimportant. It 
is a question of no little moment, which shall command 
the cultivated mind of the age and direct its thinking, 
for the next generation. It is the custom of some to 
speak lightly of metaphysical differences and discussions 
as of no practical importance. But consequences of 
greatest moment are often involved in systems of merely 
speculative philosophy. Such is the case in the pre- 
sent instance. Not the philosopher, the metaphysician, 
merely, but, directly or indirectly, every man of intel- 
lectual culture, and through these the still larger class 
whose opinions are influenced and whose conduct is 
guided by them, is personally concerned in this matter. 
No educated man, of whatever calling or profession, at 
the present day, — certainly no Christian minister, — 
can afford to be uninformed or misinformed as to the 
controversy now going on between these two conflicting 
modes of thought. Many, however, especially profes- 
sional men, who desire to pronounce an intelligent 
opinion on the subject, have not the time which is re- 

i From the Bibliotheca Sacra for July, 1868, Vol. xxv. No. 99. A Taper 
read before the Alumni Institute of Chicago Theological Seminary, at its 
recent session. 

72 



MILL VERSUS HAMILTON. 



73 



quired for such investigations, or, perhaps, the previous 
metaphysical training which would qualify them to sit 
in judgment on questions of this nature. It may be of 
service to such in their inquiries to point out in the fol- 
lowing article the essential points of difference of the 
two systems, and also some of the defects of each. 

Before proceeding to our main purpose, however, a 
few words seem necessary respecting the men them- 
selves whose systems we are to compare and discuss. 
It is known to most that Hamilton, having received in 
early life the most complete classical training, — first 
at Glasgow and afterwards at Oxford, — became a stu- 
dent of law, was subsequently appointed professor of 
History, afterwards of Logic and Metaphysics, in the 
University of Edinburgh, which post he filled with 
honor and increasing reputation for many years. Per- 
haps the most remarkable thing about the man is his 
wonderful erudition. Few men, ancient or modern, 
have ever equalled him in this. He was complete mas- 
ter of the opinions of men of all ages and nations. 
The literature and whole history of any subject which 
he had occasion to discuss, of any idea or doctrine 
which he wished either to advance or to reject, lay be^ 
fore his glance in all its completeness ; so that whatever 
position he assumed, he was master of the situation. 
Aristotle and his chief commentators, the writings of 
the schoolmen and of the early church Fathers, the 
mediaeval writers, the modern philosophers of Europe, 
from Descartes to Kant, all were familiar to him as 
household words. While, however, he called no man 
master, Aristotle among the ancients, and Reid and 
Kant among the moderns, were the three thinkers who 
exerted the greatest influence in the formation of his 



74 



STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY. 



opinions and habits of thought. His power of analysis 
and generalization is unsurpassed. His clear, search- 
ing eye penetrated at a glance through all the sur- 
roundings and incidentals, to the very pith and heart 
of a subject. His logic is terrible, as Cousin — foeman 
worthy of his steel — frankly confesses. Dogmatic at 
times, resolute and persistent always, severe sometimes 
with an opponent, but manly and honest even in his 
severest mood, he is an antagonist whom few would do 
well to encounter, and none to provoke. His style is 
peculiar, " never loose," to use the well chosen words 
of McCosh, " never tedious, never dull ; it is always 
clear, always terse, always masculine, and at times it is 

sententious, clinching, and apothegmatic He uses 

a sharp chisel and strikes his hammer with a decided 
blow ; and his ideas commonly stand out before us like 
a clear-cut statue, standing firmly on its pedestal be- 
tween us and a clear sky. Indeed, we might with jus- 
tice describe his style as not only accurate but even 
beautiful, in a sense, from its compression, its compact- 
ness, its vigor, and its point." 

To pass from this remarkable man to his present 
critic and antagonist. John Stuart Mill, the son of 
James Mill, a philosophic writer of considerable emi- 
nence of the empirical and utilitarian school, seems to 
have received his early bias and direction chiefly from 
his father's speculative opinions and modes of thought. 
Without the advantage of academic and classical train- 
ing, he is still a well-educated, though a self-educated 
man, widely read and well-informed on most subjects, 
more particularly in history and natural science ; while 
his studies and published writings have led him chiefly 
to the discussion of logic and metaphysics, including 



MILL VERSUS HAMILTON. 



75 



political economy and social science. Accustomed to 
think for himself, like most self-educated men, he is 
deficient in a proper reverence for the past, and that 
deference for the opinions of others which is the fruit 
of highest culture. Though not properly a disciple of 
Comte, he finds much in the spirit and principles of the 
positive philosophy which commands his respect and 
admiration. " Though a fairly informed man in the 
history of philosophy," says one of his principal review- 
ers, u he has attached himself to a school which thinks 
it has entirely outstripped the past ; and so he has no 
sympathy with, and no appreciation of, the profound 
thoughts of the men of former times. These are sup- 
posed to belong to the theological or metaphysical ages 
which have forever passed away in favor of the positive 
era which has now dawned upon our world. Bred thus 
in a revolutionary school of opinion, his predilections 
are in all things in favor of those who are given to 
change, and against those who think there is immutable 

truth, or who imagine that they have discovered it 

He is ever able to bring out his views in admirable 
order, and his thoughts lie in his style like pebbles at 
the bottom of a transparent stream, so that we see their 
shape and color without noticing the medium through 
which we view them. I have only to add, that in his 
love of the clear and his desire to translate the abstract 
into the concrete, he often misses the deepest properties 
of the objects examined by him ; and he seems to me 
far better fitted to co-ordinate the facts of social science 
than to deal with the first principles of fundamental 
philosophy." 1 

At present Mr. Mill is in the ascendant in England. 

1 McCosh, Examination of Mill, pp. 14, 15, 16. 



76 



STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY. 



He commands a degree of influence and authority, and 
fills a place in the public estimation, second probably to 
that of no other living thinker and writer in Great 
Britain. His opinions are law, not merely to the 
masses, who are attracted by his earnest and noble 
advocacy of the rights of the people and of civil liberty, 
but to the educated, and especially the youthful, mind 
of the country, which is fascinated by his philosophy, 
and recognizes in him a leader and teacher. He is the 
magnus Apollo, not merely in the boroughs, the places 
of business, and the halls of parliament, but in the 
universities and the schools and courts of law. This 
personal influence and popularity give additional im- 
portance to his philosophical speculations, inasmuch as 
they give him a power for good or evil over the public 
mind, such as is wielded probably by no other man in 
Great Britain, at the present moment. With respect to 
the work on which Mr. Mill's reputation as an author 
now chiefly rests, his " Examination of Sir William 
Hamilton's Philosophy," it must be regarded as in 
some respects a remarkable production. Perhaps it is 
not too much to call it, with Masson, " a truly splendid 
work." It certainly displays great mental power, great 
acuteness and skill in detecting the weak and vulnerable 
points in an opponents position, and a persistent deter- 
mination to silence and set aside the great authority 
of Sir William Hamilton, as acknowledged leader of 
British thought in matters of philosophic speculation. 
This work he deliberately undertakes, and to some 
extent, doubtless, accomplishes in the volumes before 
us. It was a work quite necessary to be done by some 
one in the interests of the positive philosophy, as repre- 
sented by the English branch of the school of Comte, 



MILL VERSUS HAMILTON. 



77 



as also of the empirical and sensational school of Locke, 
Hobbes, Hume, Priestly ; to the further existence of 
which methods of thought in England the utter demoli- 
tion of Sir William Hamilton's opinions and authority 
had become a prime necessity. It was for Mr. Mill, as 
the acknowledged leader of the revolutionary and em- 
pirical philosophy, to attempt the task. With fixed 
purpose and manly courage he has essayed the work, 
by no means easy to be done. Of his success the future 
must judge. Even his opponents must give him credit, 
on the whole, for fairness and candor in his general 
treatment of the illustrious rival whose system and 
whose authority he seeks to demolish. We fully agree, 
however, with the general estimate of Mr. Mill and his 
work which is expressed by Dr. McCosh, himself one 
of the fairest and most impartial of critics: "I am sure 
Mr. Mill means to be a just critic of his rival. But, 
from having attached himself to a narrow and exclusive 
school of philosophy, he is scarcely capable of compre- 
hending — he is certainly utterly incapable of appreciat- 
ing — some of Hamilton's profounder discussions. It 
would be easy to show that not a few of the alleged 
inconsistencies of Hamilton arise from misapprehensions 

on the part of his critic I certainly do not look 

on Mr. Mill as a superficial writer. On the contrary, 
on subjects on which he has not been led to follow Mr. 
James Mill or M. Comte, his thoughts are commonly as 
solid and weighty as they are clearly expressed. But 
speaking exclusively of his philosophy of first principles, 
I believe he is getting so ready an acceptance among 
many for his metaphysical theories mainly because, 
like Hobbes and Condillac, he possesses a delusive 
simplicity, which does not account for, but simply 



78 



STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY. 



overlooks, the distinguishing properties of our mental 
nature." 1 

With these general remarks upon the individual 
writers, we proceed to the work more properly before 
us, the discussion of the two systems as such. And 
first, their essential differences. 

ESSENTIAL DIFFERENCES. 

1. The first and most obvious difference between the 
two systems is at the very starting-point from which 
they set forth. In the whole history of philosophy we 
find the different schools and systems dividing and 
diverging on this question first and chiefly : Whence 
come our ideas, notions, beliefs — wholly from ex- 
perience ? or are there some among them of an a priori 
nature, necessary, connate, the result of constitutional 
causes — ideas and beliefs arising in the mind prior to 
and independent of all experience of the world without, 
springing from the very structure of the mind itself? 
This is the great water-shed of philosophic thought and 
speculation in all ages, from which diverse theories start 
upon their course toward widely distant oceans. In 
English philosophy this difference has from the first 
been most distinctly marked. On the one hand, the 
empirical or sensational school, deriving all our ideas 
from experience, and denying all innate, or connate, or 
a priori truth, has been largely in the ascendant in 
England, as represented by such names as Hobbes, 
Locke, Hartley, Bentham, Berkeley, Hume, Priestly, 
Paley, the Mills, father and son, and others of less note. 

On the other hand, the spiritual or transcendental 

1 Examination of Mill's Philosophy, pp. 23, 30. 



MILL VERSUS HAMILTON. 



79 



school, as distinguished from the sensational, repre- 
sented abroad by such names as Descartes, Leibnitz, 
Kant, Cousin, and the chiefs of modern German specu- 
lation, has not been without its disciples and advocates 
in Great Britain. Of this class were Cud worth and the 
Cambridge Platonists. The Scotch school has from 
the first been of this type, as represented in the sober 
common sense of Reid, the elegance of Stewart, the 
philosophic clearness and precision of Mackintosh, the 
genius and eclecticism of Coleridge, and the wonderful 
erudition and comprehensive grasp of one mightier 
than they all — Sir William Hamilton. We class 
Coleridge in this enumeration, with the Scotch school, 
and this again with the leading transcendentalists of 
France and Germany — Descartes, Leibnitz, Kant, 
Cousin, — for the reason that, however widely they 
may differ in other points and in the general spirit of 
their respective systems, on the question now under 
consideration they stand together and agreed. That 
in the category of our ideas and beliefs are some which 
transcend the limits of experience, and are not derived 
from that source, is a doctrine as clearly enunciated, 
and as firmly held, by Reid, Stewart, and Mackintosh 
as by Coleridge or Cousin ; and as positively by Ham- 
ilton and his pupils as by either. As to this matter, 
the latter is as thorough a transcendentalist as Kant 
or Schelling. 

No philosopher, ancient or modern, has cherished a 
stronger conviction, or more distinctly and earnestly 
avowed that conviction, that only on the theory of 
necessary or a priori ideas is any philosophy possible, 
than has Sir William Hamilton. It pervades and 
gives character to his whole system, and, as Masson 



80 



STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY. 



has very justly remarked, " the whole tenor of his 
labors was towards an assertion, purification, and re- 
definition of transcendentalism ; and when he died he 
left the flag of transcendentalism waving anew over 
more than one citadel of the world." 

And this is precisely one of the fundamental differ- 
ences between the philosophy of Hamilton and that of 
Mill, who stands as strongly committed to the opposite 
view. All truth is experimental; all knowledge, ideas, 
belief of anything, the result of experience, he would 
have us believe. This is the key to his whole system. 
It is avowed in his earlier philosophical essays ; it is 
implied in his logic, which is built on this foundation ; 
it comes out distinctly in his latest and chief philosoph- 
ical work, the Examination of Hamilton. Our highest 
principles and generalization, our so-called first truths, 
even mathematical axioms, ideas of right and wrong, 
of beauty, duty, and the like, are all, he would assure 
us, of empirical origin, the result of a more or less 
wide and oft-repeated induction. Nothing is true a 
priori. Knowledge, notion, belief, axiom, are all to be 
traced back ultimately to sensation. Utilitarianism, or 
a refined and enlarged expediency, is the only ground 
of morals. It is only by experience that we come to 
know that two straight lines cannot enclose a space, or 
that one course of conduct is right and another wrong. 
I 2. Another essential difference of the two systems 
relates to the theory of perception. This, too, like the 
preceding, is one of those great division lines which 
mark off opposite systems, as a chain of mountains 
runs through and divides a continent. As the former 
question decides the psychology, so this the cosmology 
of any given system. Of what is it precisely that we 



MILL VERSUS HAMILTON. 



81 



are cognizant in the act of external perception — of the 
object itself directly, or only of the sensations produced 
in us by the object? That is the question. Cognizant 
(or, as Hamilton would say, conscious) of the object 
itself, says one theory. We perceive not merely our 
own sensations, awakened by the external object, but 
the object itself, as possessing certain essential necessary 
qualities, namely, extension in space, divisibility, size, 
figure, etc., which in common parlance are known as 
the primary qualities of matter. Thus we come into 
direct cognizance of an external world. Per contra, 
we are cognizant, not of the object itself, replies the 
other theory, not of this directly, not in fact of this at 
all, but only of our own affections and sensations. We 
know the existence of anything external to self indi- 
rectly and by inference, if indeed at all. According as 
we give one or the other of these answers to the ques- 
tion proposed, we take our place in philosophy as 
realists or idealists. 

Mankind in general, it has been well said, are natu- 
ral realists. They believe in the quality of mind and 
matter, and that the latter is the reality which the 
senses represent it to be. The external object, the 
rock, the tree, the mountain, is what it seems, and 
would be the same as now in form, size, color, sound, 
and taste, were there no percipient mind to see, hear, 
touch, or taste it. The waves that beat upon some 
unknown shore, which no foot of man has ever trod, 
flash in the moonlight with the same sparkling bril- 
liancy, and crash upon their rocky barriers with the 
same tumult and uproar, as the billows that play upon 
the Atlantic coast. Nature is what it seems, and is 
not in any sense the creation of our own minds. It 
6 



82 



STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY. 



requires, however, but little exercise of philosophic 
thought to perceive that a very considerable part of 
what we thus regard as really existing out of ourselves 
is only the affection of our own organism. The taste, 
the color, the odor, the sound, are our own sensations, 
and not properties of the object. The most we can say 
is, they are the effect of the external object on our own 
sensitive organism, and were that organism different 
from what it is, the result would be different ; the rose 
would no longer seem red, but green, or some other 
color ; the wave would no longer flash in the sunbeam, 
nor sound as now upon the rocks ; that which is now 
acid or sweet or bitter to the taste, or pungent to the 
smell, or soft to the touch, would present far different 
appearances. 

Accordingly we are not surprised to find among 
philosophers few natural realists, and to find these few 
throwing out of the account very much which the un- 
thinking multitude regard as external reality. The 
secondary qualities of matter, so called, are, even by 
the natural realist, generally considered to be simply 
affections of our own sense, and not properly qualities 
of matter at all. 

But having conceded so much, where shall we stop ? 
What evidence that the other and so-called primary 
qualities of objects are not in like manner, some or all 
of them, mere subjective affections, produced in us by, 
or at least representing to our minds, some object 
without, which external object remains to us in itself 
unknown ? So have thought the great majority of 
philosophers ; constructive idealists these, admitting 
the reality of an external world as somehow repre- 
sented to us in external perception, but admitting it as 



MILL VERSUS HAMILTON. 



83 



an inference from our own subjective impressions, and 
not as an object of immediate cognition. What we 
really know in perception is not the external world, 
but only our ideas and impressions of that externality, 
say they. 

While in the ranks of natural realism we scarcely 
number more than some half score philosophers of 
note, among them Reid, Hamilton, and the disciples 
of the latter, we find on the role of constructive idealism 
such names as Descartes, Leibnitz, Kant, Berkeley, 
Malebranche, Sir Isaac Newton, Locke, and Browne. 
Others, again, have gone further, and have questioned 
the existence of any such external reality as repre- 
sented through our senses, resolving the whole into 
merely subjective affections of the mind itself; pure 
idealists these, represented by Berkeley in England 
and Fitchte in Germany. 

It is somewhat doubtful, perhaps, to which of these 
two classes Mill beUngs, that of pure or that of con- 
structive idealists. We have thoughts, sensations, 
feelings, and that is all. Out of this our philosophy 
must construct itself; out of this our theory of matter 
and mind is to be evolved. Our present sensations 
suggest the possibility of other sensations of a similar 
nature and to an indefinite extent ; the idea of some- 
thing distinct from our fleeting impressions ; something 
fixed and permanent while they vary ; something inde- 
pendent of them and us, capable of producing similar 
effects at any time on our minds and on other minds, 
and this, he says, is our idea of external substance. 
" Matter, then^may be defined a permanent possibility 
of sensation. If I am asked whether I believe in 
matter, I ask whether the questioner accepts this defi- 



84 STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY. 



nition of it. If lie does I believe in matter, and so do 
all Berkeleians. In any other sense than this I do 
not." In like manner he resolves the notion of mind 
into " a series of feelings, or, as it has been called, a 
thread of consciousness, however supplemented by 
believed possibilities of consciousness, which are not, 
though they might be, realized." As in the case of 
matter, so of mind, this idea of something permanent 
in distinction from the sensation or feeling of the 
present moment, " resolves itself into the belief of a 
permanent possibility of those states." Matter, then, 
according to this, is the permanent possibility of sensa- 
tion ; mind, a series of feelings, a running thread of 
consciousness, with a permanent possibility of the same. 
Such is the cosmology of Mr. Mill, a constructive 
idealism of the most refined and attenuated sort — if 
indeed it be not rather the nihilism of Hume himself, 
from which it is difficult to distinguish it. He seems 
to us in all this to be more purely an idealist than 
Berkeley, who admits the real entity of mind, while 
Mill resolves it into a mere series of feelings, with a 
permanent possibility of the same. 

It is a little remarkable that this series of feelings 
should have, or seem to have, a knowledge of its own 
past and future, of itself as having been and to be. 
This Mr. Mill admits to be inexplicable, and a paradox 
-—one of those ultimate facts which admit of no ex- 
planation. 

3. The difference now pointed out leads to and 
involves a further essential difference of the two sys- 
tems, in respect to the doctrine of the relativity of our 
knowledge — a difference ontological, as the others 
were cosmological and psychological. Cosmology and 



MILL VERSUS HAMILTON 1 . 



85 



psychology end with the phenomenal. They are sciences 
of things as they appear. Ontology, if there be such a 
thing possible, is the science of the absolute, of things 
as they are per se, and not merely of the appearances 
— phenomena — which they present. Is such a science 
possible, however, to man ? A question on which phi- 
losophy has much debated, and on which, as on the 
previous questions, different systems find themselves 
essentially divergent. That there is something beyond 
and back of the phenomenal, something supernatural 
or absolute, philosophers have usually admitted. That 
a knowledge or science of this is possible, — that, with 
all its endeavors, the human mind can transcend the 
limits of the purely phenomenal, and attain to a science 
of things perse, or of the absolute, — they have with 
almost equal unanimity denied. The absolute can be 
known, not to sense nor to reason, but only to faith. 
The finite cannot comprehend the infinite. Our knowl- 
edge is wholly relative, wholly of the phenomenal. 

Perhaps no philosopher has done more to set this 
matter in its true light than Immanuel Kant. Trans- 
cendentalist as he was in psychology, asserting the 
a priori elements of our knowledge with the most con- 
vincing clearness and positiveness, he utterly and em- 
phatically denied the possibility of an ontology. Only 
with the phenomenal has man's reason to do ; the 
absolute is wholly beyond his reach — only another 
name for the unknown and inconceivable. Those who 
came after him, however, were not content to abide by 
that position. The whole current of German philosophy 
subsequent to Kant has been one continued struggle to 
recover an ontology, or science of the absolute, as the 
foundation of all true philosophy. The absolute iden- 



86 



STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY. 



tity theory of Fichte, carried out and developed by 
Schelling and Hegel, are a persistent, resolute attempt 
to demonstrate an ontology. Cousin has thrown his 
brilliant name and pen into the same scale. 

At first sight one would say, Mill and Hamilton agree 
in this matter. Both reject the possibility of any such 
thing as a science of -the absolute. Man knows, and 
can know, only phenomena, never things per se. Our 
knowledge is wholly relative. We know phenomena 
only ; and we know these only as they stand related to 
our faculties and capacities of knowledge. 

Thus far they are agreed. But when we come to 
inquire what is meant by relativity of knowledge, as 
that expression is used by each, we find the two phi- 
losophers by no means at one. 

True, our knowledge is relative, says Hamilton, in 
the sense already explained. We know not inde- 
pendently and absolutely, but only by means of the 
phenomena presented to our faculties ; but we do know 
in this way, and our knowledge is real and certain. In 
every act of perception, for example, as already stated, 
we have direct, immediate knowledge of self as per- 
cipient, and also of the object perceived — the ego and 
the non ego. We are conscious of the two. This is 
the doctrine of natural realism. On the contrary, 
says Mill, we know immediately and positively, as 
already stated, neither the self-perceiving nor the ob- 
ject perceived, — neither the ego nor the non ego^ — 
but only the impressions produced and the feelings 
awakened thereby. We know nothing positively be- 
yond these feelings and impressions. There is no 
certainty of aught else. If it be asked, what guarantee 
have I that these impressions are correct, — that the 



MILL VERSUS HAMILTON. 



87 



reality corresponds to the impression, it turns out that 
there is really none whatever. Things seem to be thus 
and thus, but there is no certainty that they are so. 
As thus held, the relativity of knowledge amounts to 
absolute nescience. Nothing is known, nothing certain 
or positive. As thus held, the doctrine differs in toto 
from the relativity of knowledge as held by Hamilton ; 
and it is a difference essential to the two systems — a 
difference growing out of the different doctrines of 
perception held by each. 

DEFECTS OF MILL. 

We have pointed out certain essential differences 
between the two systems. We regard the system of 
John Stuart Mill as essentially defective in each of the 
respects now mentioned. The system is at fault, as it 
seems to us : 

1. In deriving, as it does, all our knowledge and 
ideas from sensation and experience. This is essen- 
tially a shallow and superficial account of the matter. 
We have ideas and elements of knowledge that cannot 
thus be accounted for ; and while much that goes to 
make up the inventory of the mental furniture may 
doubtless be ascribed to an empirical origin, it is 
equally certain that among those ideas are some which, 
if not properly innate, are, to say the least, connate, 
having their foundation in the very structure and con- 
stitution of the mind ; so that, as the mind develops, 
these ideas are developed in it by the very nature and 
law of its being. Without entering fully into the 
argument, which would lead us beyond our proper 
limits, it is sufficient to our present purpose to say, 



88 



STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY. 



that it is impossible to explain on any other principle 
the idea of beauty, the idea of right and moral obliga- 
tion, and the idea of God. 

Even Mr. Mill, while purposely rejecting all intuitive 
principles and a priori elements, and seeking to con- 
struct all our ideas and operations out of the material 
furnished by sensation and association, is, as he pro- 
ceeds, obliged to call in other and a priori principles. 1 
Thus he admits the existence of intuitive and imme- 
diate knowledge, as the source whence other truth 
may be inferred, and the starting-point of all reasoning. 
He admits consciousness as a sufficient and self-evident 
witness, whose testimony is indisputable and ultimate 
in all cases. He admits our belief in the veracity of 
memory to be an ultimate fact. He admits a native 
law of expectation, and original laws of association. 
All this intuitive, ultimate, and original ground-work 
of human knowledge is quite inconsistent with that 
empirical origin of all our ideas which constitutes the 
fundamental tenet of the school to which Mr. Mill 
belongs. In fact, the system of Mill, with all its sensa- 
tional proclivities and empirical spirit and purpose, 
contains as many assumptions and postulates, or calls 
to its aid as many first principles, as are demanded by 
the most strenuous advocates of the intuitional school, 
whether Scotch or German. 

2. The system is at fault in denying, as it does, an 
immediate knowledge of the actual external world in 
perception. We regard this doctrine as the special 
contribution of the Scotch school, and especially of Sir 
William Hamilton, to mental science — the most im- 

i See McCosh's Defence of Fundamental Truth, chapter iii. on Mr. Mill's 
Admissions. 



MILL VERSUS HAMILTON. 



89 



portant step in advance which psychology has made in 
the present century. Mr. Mill reverses all this, takes 
a step, or in fact many steps, backwards, and lands 
philosophy again where it was placed by Hume and 
Berkeley. The effect is to unsettle everything already 
established, and to leave no solid substantial basis for 
philosophy to rest upon. If we do not really and im- 
mediately perceive an actual external world, but only 
infer its existence from certain sensations or affections 
of our own, then we have no longer any positive 
knowledge that there is such a world without, or even 
of the existence of the mind itself; for the inference 
and impression in either case may be erroneous. All 
that we really and positively know is the existence of 
certain sensations and impressions — all else is inference 
and conjecture, more or less probable. Matter becomes, 
as we have seen, the mere possibility of sensations ; 
and mind, or what we so call, is only the associability 
of these sensations w T ith each other, together w 7 ith a 
certain inexplicable recognition or recollection of them- 
selves as having thus existed and associated in the 
past, which phenomenon we call memory. " This, 
and nothing more," is the sum and substance of all 
knowledge and certainty to the being called man. To 
this pitiable residuum, this miserable phantom of a 
shade, is philosophy reduced by the showing of Mr. Mill. 

3. The uncertainty which is thus thrown over the 
realm of psychology and cosmology is made to extend 
also to all truth, by Mr. Mill's peculiar doctrine of the 
relativity of knowledge — a view of the matter which 
takes away all certainty of truth, and reduces human 
knowledge, as we have seen, to a simple and absolute 
nescience. This we regard as another and fundamental 



90 



STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY. 



error of the system. Not only is our knowledge of an 
external world, and of the mind itself, reduced to a 
mere inference from our sensations, but our knowledge 
of anything comes in the last analysis to this — that 
the thing seems to us thus and thus. The only thing 
certain is that we have such and such impressions. 
Of the correctness of those impressions there is no 
guarantee. To us, constituted as we are, a part is less 
than the whole, a straight line is the shortest distance 
between two points, and two and two make four. 
There is no certainty that these things are so elsewhere, 
and always — that they are so in the nature of things ; 
in other parts of the universe they may be otherwise. 
There may be those to whose intelligence two and two 
are five ; orders of being to whom selfishness, deception, 
and fraud are virtue, and benevolence, sin. Nothing 
is true universally and necessarily, but only as the 
mind, by its laws and habits of association, perceives it, 
or believes it, to be thus and thus. Such, at least, we 
understand to be the position of Mr. Mill, plainly 
stated ; and, we need hardly add, it is a doctrine far- 
reaching and fatal in its consequences to all philosophy 
and all knowledge. The simple fact that two things 
have been invariably associated in our experience is 
sufficient, according to Mr. Mill, to account for their 
seeming to us to be inseparable. " Thus," to use the 
language of Dr. McCosh, " two and two, having been 
associated in our experience with four, we give them a 
relation in the nature of things ; but if two and two 
had been followed by the appearance of five, we should 
have had a like assurance of two and two and five 
being equal. Truth, in Mr. Mill's philosophy, is not 
even a logical or rational consistency between ideas ; it 



MILL VERSUS HAMILTON. 91 

can be nothing more than an accordance of our ideas 
with sensations, and laws of the association of sensa- 
tions ; which sensations come we know not whence, 
and are associated by resemblances existing we know 
not how, or more frequently by contiguity, implying 
no relation of reason, no connection in the nature of 
things, and very possibly altogether fortuitous or abso- 
lutely fatalistic. 

" We see now the issues in which the doctrine of the 
relativity of knowledge, as held by Mr. Mill, lands us. 
The geometrical demonstrations of Euclid and Appolo- 
nius and Newton may hold good only within our ex- 
perience and 4 a reasonable distance beyond.' The 
mathematics taught in Cambridge may differ in their 
fundamental principles from those taught in the cor- 
responding university of the planet Jupiter, where two 
and two may make five, where two straight lines may 
enclose a space, and where the three angles of a triangle 
may be more than two right angles." 1 

The whole body of scientific truth which Mr. Mill 
has himself done so much to elaborate, becomes in this 
light, as the same critic justly remarks, " simply possi- 
bilities of sensations, coming in groups and in regular 
succession and with resemblances which can be noticed. 
And is this the sum of what has been gained by the 
highest science of the nineteenth century ? As we 
contemplate it, do we not feel as if the solid heart of 
truth and its radiating light were both gone, and as if 
we had left only a series of systematic vibrations in an 
unknown ether? Does this satisfy the convictions and 
the longings of man ? Does not the intelligence declare 
that it has something deeper than this ? " 2 



1 Examination of Mill, p. 378. 



2 Examination of Mill, p. 374. 



92 



STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY. 



The application of this doctrine to morals is suffi- 
ciently obvious ; and we agree with a writer in the 
London Quarterly, 1 in pronouncing it one " than which 

none indeed can be more morally pernicious If 

in some other world two and two may make five, in 
some other world what we regard as virtue may be 
vice, and our wrong may come forth there as right." 2 

We have noticed what we regard as the essential 
and fundamental errors of the system of Mr. Mill. The 
radical differences between his system and that of 
Hamilton are so many radical errors of the former. 

4. It is to be noticed in addition, as a defect of this 
philosophy, that, even admitting its essential positions, 
it fails to account for some of the most important 
mental phenomena. 

For example, asserting the strictly empirical origin 
of all our notions both of mind and matter, it makes 
the mind, as we have seen, to be a mere series of feel- 
ings, tending to associate according to certain laws, 
with a permanent possibility of the like. But whence 
this tendency of one feeling or state of consciousness to 
associate with another — this associability of the feel- 
ings? Is not this an a priori element — something 
imparted antecedently to the series of feelings which 
we call the mind, and something wholly inconsistent 
with the empirical theory ? This associability of the 
feelings is quietly assumed, postulated as a fact, which 
it certainly is — but a fact unaccounted for, and not to 
be accounted for, as it seems to us, on Mr. Mill's theory 
of the mind. In the language of Masson, — whose 
critique on Mill, in his work entitled " Recent British 

1 January, 1866. 

2 See note (A.) at the end of this Article. 



MILL VERSUS HAMILTON. 



93 



Philosophy," is the most thorough and able discussion 
of that system which has yet appeared, — "It seems 
to me that a very large amount of a priori assumption 
is implied in the very terms of the statement. It is 
assumed, in the first place, that there are certain 
predetermined associabilities among the phenomena 
of feeling from the first — that they tend to come 
together or grow together according to certain laws or 

rules of associability pre-imparted to them 

Without these precise associabilities among the crude 
phenomena of feeling, there would not be the result he 
seeks, that is, the generation of these notions of mind 
and matter, of an ego and a non ego, which each mature 
mind has. But as these associabilities are laws pre- 
imparted to the phenomena, and regulating most 
strictly the process of their cogitation, how can the 
process be said to be empirical ? " 1 

Again, the fact of memory is wholly inexplicable on 
this theory of the mind, as Mr. Mill himself frankly 
admits. This series of feelings, this running thread of 
consciousness, recognizes itself not only as existing in 
the present, but as having existed in the past. But 
how can a mere series of feelings be aware of feelings 
Which have preceded ? The flash of present conscious- 
ness — how comes it aware of that which in like manner 
flashed into consciousness in some past movement? 
This continuity or union of that which is with that 
which was — does it not involve something more, as 
the basis and ground-work of the whole, than the au- 
thor's theory of the mind as a mere series of sensations 
will furnish ? In the language of Mr. Mill himself, 
who frankly admits the difficulty, and leaves it unex- 

i Recent British Philosophy, pp. 312, 314. 



94 



STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY. 



plained : "If therefore we speak of the mind as a series 
of feelings, we are obliged to complete the statement 
by calling it a series of feelings which is aware of itself 
as past and future ; and we are reduced to the alterna- 
tive of believing that the mind or ego is something 
different from any series of feelings and possibilities of 
them, or of accepting the paradox that something 
which, ex hypothesis is but a series of feelings, can be 
aware of itself as a series." Mr. Mill, so far from ac- 
cepting the first part of this alternative, that the mind 
is really anything different from a series of feelings or 
possibilities of feeling, prefers to retain his theory or 
definition of the mind even with the admission of the 
paradox which it involves. We may well ask, with 
Masson, " what is the advantage, then, of propounding 
such a definition ? " 

There is still another and very important mental phe- 
nomenon which the philosophy of Mr. Mill wholly fails 
to explain. We refer to the feeling of obligation which 
arises in the mind in view of actions perceived to be 
right. In accordance with his theory of the empirical 
origin of our ideas, and in common with the utilitarian 
school of moralists, Mr. Mill, as we have already seen, 
derives our idea of right and wrong from the perceived 
advantage of a prior course of conduct — the benefit or 
detriment which in our experience we find to result 
from such and such procedure. In common with 
Bentham, the elder Mill, and moralists of that school, 
he makes the " greatest happiness " principle the ruling 
motive and spring of human conduct. " The utilitarian 
doctrine," lie justly remarks, " is that happiness is de- 
sirable, and the only thing desirable, as an end." The 
existence of the moral judgments and feelings lie dis- 



MILL VERSUS HAMILTON. 95 

tinctly admits as a fact in human nature, phenomena 
concerning whose reality there can be no dispute ; and 
lie proceeds to account for these phenomena on the 
principle of the chemistry of association, which plays so 
important a part in the philosophy of Mr. Mill. " The 
only color for representing our moral judgments as 
the result of a peculiar fact of our nature, is that our 
feelings of moral approbation and disapprobation are 
really peculiar feelings. But it is notorious that 
peculiar feelings, unlike any others we have experience 
of, are created by association every day." As instances 
of this he refers to the love of power, feelings of ambi- 
tion, envy, jealousy, the love of wealth, etc. Now, not 
to insist on the fact that some, at least, of these are 
strictly native principles, and by no means the product 
of any principle of association or chemistry of thought 
— as the love of power for instance — it is sufficient to 
remark that in respect to the mental phenomena now 
in question, that is, our moral feelings, there is this 
remarkable feature which does not pertain to any other 
class of feelings, whether native or acquired — a sense 
of obligation. I not only perceive by observation and 
experience that a given course of conduct will be for 
the advantage and perfect happiness of all concerned, 
in which case motives of prudence and of general 
benevolence may lead me to adopt this line of action, 
but, over and above all such considerations, I feel 
instinctively that I ought to pursue such a course, that 
the opposite is blameworthy and must not be pursued. 
Now whence this " ought," this " must," this sense of 
obligation ? It is precisely here that the utilitarian and 
empirical theory of Mr. Mill breaks down. It is pre- 
cisely this essential characteristic feature of our moral 



96 



STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY. 



feelings which the philosophy of association is wholly 
unable to explain, namely, to use the language of 
Masson, " the conversion of the prodest into the oportet ; 
the evolution of the participle in dus out of never so 
much of the past participle passive ; the demonstration 
how or why, if it were granted that moral actions are those 
done with a view to the greatest possible diminution of 
pain and promotion of pleasure throughout the sentient 
universe, there should have arisen in connection with 
this class of actions the notion of moral obligation to 
do them, unless on the principle of some a priori or 
connate notion of rightness that fitted itself on to that 
class of actions." 1 

To use the language of Dr. McCosh : <; In none of 
its applications is the theory seen to fail so utterly as 
in the attempt thus to produce our moral perceptions. 
Provided we once have the ideas, the laws of asso- 
ciation might show how they could be brought up 
again ; how in the reproduction certain parts might 
sink into shadow and neglect while others come forth 
into prominence and light ; and how the whole feeling 
by the confluence of different ideas might be wrought 
into a glow of intensity ; but the difficulty of generat- 
ing the ideas, such ideas, ideas so full of meaning, 
is not thereby surmounted. The idea I have of pain 
is one thing, and the idea I have of deceit, that it is 
morally evil, condemnable, deserving of pain, is an 
entirely different thing, our consciousness being wit- 
ness. On the supposition that there is a chemical 
power in association to create such ideas as those of 
duty and merit, sin and demerit, this chemical power 
would be a native moral power ; not the product of 

1 Recent British Philosophy, p. 264. 



MILL VERSUS HAMILTON. 



97 



sensations, but a power above them, and adapted to 
transmute them from the baser into the golden 
substance." 1 

In each of the respects now mentioned, the philosophy 
of sensation and association, even if its positions are 
conceded, fails utterly to meet and account for the 
mental phenomenon. 

5. It is a defect, not indeed of the system which he 
advocates, but of Mr. Mill himself as a philosophical 
writer, that he fails at times to grasp tbe real drift and 
meaning of a statement or doctrine which he is opposing, 
and so raises a false issue. Instances of this occur 
repeatedly in his examination of Hamilton. Thus, for 
example, he goes on page after page with all manner 
of supposition, doubt, and conjecture as to what can 
be the possible meaning of Sir William Hamilton when 
he affirms the relativity of our knowledge ; and, after 
involving the matter in all possible confusion, concludes 
that he cannot have meant anything worth tbe trouble 
of asserting — that too, after having himself quoted a 
passage in which Hamilton expressly, and with the 
utmost precision, tells us just what he does mean by 
the expression. " In this proposition," says Hamilton, 
" the term relative is opposed to the term absolute; and 
therefore, in saying that we know only the relative, I 
virtually assert that we know nothing absolute, — 
nothing existing absolutely, that is, in and for itself, 
and without relation to us and our faculties," He 
goes on to say, that were our senses and faculties of 
perception indefinitely multiplied, still our whole knowl- 
edge would be, as now, only of the relative. Of 
existence in itself we should still know nothing. " We 

1 Examination of Mill, p. 390, 



98 



STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY. 



should still apprehend existence only in certain special 
modes, only in certain relations to oar faculties of 
knowledge." 

Nothing can be plainer than this — nothing truer. 
Yet Mr. Mill professes to be entirely lost in the vain 
endeavor to comprehend in what possible sense Ham- 
ilton can use the term " relativity of knowledge." For 
does not Hamilton also teach in plainest terms that 
there are certain qualities of matter ; to wit, extension 
and the other primary and essential attributes, which 
we know immediately and as they arc in themselves — 
not merely by their effects on us ? If so, how is such 
knowledge relative ? But Hamilton himself answers, 
" In saying that a thing is known in itself, I do not 
mean a thing is known in its absolute existence, that is, 
out of relation to us. To know a tiling in itself, or imme- 
diately, is an expression I use merely in contrast to the 
knowledge of a thing in representation, or mediately" 
The words which we have taken the liberty to italicize 
in the above passage, and that previously cited, show, 
as clearly as it is possible for language to show any- 
thing, precisely what Hamilton means by " relativity 
of knowledge " on the one hand, and by the knowledge 
of a thing as it is in itself" on the other; and it re- 
quires no little ingenuity to twist the two into any real, 
or even apparent inconsistency. 

Mr. Mill quotes these very passages, but on the very 
next page tells us with all assurance and complacency, 
that " if what we perceive and cognize is not merely a 
cause of our suggestive impressions, but a thing pos- 
sessing iii its own nature and essence a long list of 
properties, extension, etc., all perceived as essential 
attributes of the thing as objectively existing 



MILL VERSUS HAMILTON. 



99 



then I am willing to believe that in affirming this 
knowledge to be entirely relative to self, such a thinker 
as Sir William Hamilton had a meaning ; but I have 
no small difficulty in discovering what it is ! " 1 We 
can hardly conceive how a mind of ordinary sagacity 
and acumen could find any such difficulty ; but while 
it is not for us to question the fact, in the face of his 
own positive assertion, that he really cannot tell what 
Sir William Hamilton means in the above statements, 
it becomes a serious question whether a mind so pecu- 
liarly constituted is precisely fitted to sit in judgment 
as a critic on a system like Hamilton's, or, in fact, on 
any system of metaphysical philosophy. 

A like instance of confusion of thought occurs in his 
critique on Hamilton's doctrine of the Infinite and the 
Absolute, as against Cousin ; in which he persistently 
substitutes the concrete expressions, " an Infinite," 
"an Absolute," in place of the abstract, "the Infinite," 
" the Absolute," and proceeds to argue the case as if 
they were synonymous ; whereas the whole matter 
turns on precisely this difference. 

This is the more remarkable inasmuch as he himself 
first correctly states the real question at issue, and 
then deliberately proceeds to substitute and discuss in 
its place an entirely different question. " The ques- 
tion is," he says, " whether we have a direct intuition 
of 4 the Infinite,' and 4 the Absolute,' Mr. Cousin main- 
taining that we have, Sir William Hamilton that we 
have not ; that the Infinite and the Absolute are incon- 
ceivable to us, and, by consequence, unknowable." 2 
That is precisely the question. And yet, in reviewing 

1 Examination of Hamilton, i. p. 33. 

2 Examination of Hamilton, i. p. 48. 



100 



STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY. 



the arguments of Sir William Hamilton for the position 
which he maintains, the very first remark of Mr. Mill 
is " that most of them lose their application by simply 
substituting for the metaphysical abstraction 'the Ab- 
solute,' the more intelligible concrete expression ' some- 
thing absolute.' " 1 Indeed they do ! " It is these 
unmeaning abstractions, however, these muddles of 
self-contradiction, which alone our author has proved 
against Cousin and others, to be unknowable. He has 
shown without difficulty that • we cannot know the 
Infinite or the Absolute. He has not shown that we 
cannot know a concrete reality as infinite or as abso- 
lute." 2 This latter, we reply, was not what Cousin 
held ; Cousin's doctrine is not that we may know a 
concrete being as infinite and absolute, but that we 
may know " the Infinite" and "the Absolute," — as 
Mill himself had just before correctly stated. And if 
Hamilton has shown this, then he has shown precisely 
what he undertook to show. 

This misconception of the matter at issue, and con- 
fusion of things that differ, runs through the entire 
chapter, and re-appears at every step of the argument. 
Thus in regard to the negative character of our notions 
of the Infinite and Absolute : " This is quite true of 
the senseless abstraction 6 the Infinite.' That indeed 
is purely negative ; but in place of ' the Infinite,' put 
the idea of 4 something infinite ' — in other words, 
change the very proposition which Hamilton is refuting 
— t and the argument collapses at once.' " 3 Verily so ! 
This mistake is one into which McCosh has also fallen, 
who cites with approval the views of Mill, as above, 
and pronounces them to be safer, and in some respects 

* Examination of Hamilton, i. p. 58. 2 Ibid. i. p. 161. 3 Ibid i. p. 62. 



MILL VERSUS HAMILTON. 



101 



juster, than those of Hamilton I." *" No doubt we can 
conceive of something infinite, or of a being of infinite 
perfection, as McCosh and Mill assert ; but that is not 
to conceive of " the Infinite." 

6. There is yet another respect in which the erroneous 
tendency of Mr. Mill's philosophy is manifest, to which 
at present we can merely allude. We refer to its 
theological bearings. While professing to leave the 
whole subject of natural theology untouched, and an 
open question, it seems to us really to undermine some 
of its essential principles. The matter has been well 
stated by Dr. McCosh : " It is clear that many of the 
old proofs cannot be advanced by those who accept his 
theory. The argument from catholic consent can have 
no value on such a system. That derived from the 
moral faculty in man, so much insisted on by Kant 
and Chalmers, is no longer available, when it is to be 
allowed that the moral law has no place in our consti- 
tution, and that our moral sentiments are generated by 
inferior feelings and associated circumstances. But 
then he tells ns the design argument 1 would stand 
exactly where it does.' I doubt much whether this is 
the case. I see no principles left by Mr. Mill sufficient 
to enable ns to answer the objections which have been 
urged against it by Hume. Kant is usually reckoned 
as having been successful in showing that the argument 
from design involves the principle of cause and effect. 
We see an order and an adaptation in nature which 
are evidently effects, and we look for a cause. Has 
Mr. Mill's doctrine of causation left this proof un- 
touched ? Suppose that we allow to him that there is 
nothing in an effect which of itself implies a canse ; 

i Defence of Fundamental Truth, p. 73. 



102 



STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY. 



that even when we "know that there is a cause, no light 
is thereby thrown on the nature of that cause ; that 
the causal relation is simply that of invariable antece- 
dence within the limits of our experience ; and that 
beyond our experience there may be events without a 
cause, — I fear that the argument is left without a 
foundation." 1 

Mr. Mill is himself of the opinion that a belief in an 
overruling Providence and a personal God is by no 
means essential to religion or to the practical govern- 
ment of human conduct. In his latest work, a critique 
on the positive philosophy of Comte, he holds the fol- 
lowing language : " Though conscious of being in an 
extremely small minority, we venture to think that a 
religion may exist without belief in a God, and that a 
religion without a God may be, even to Christians, an 
instructive and profitable object of contemplation." 2 

Mr. Mill, however, would not be understood as deny- 
ing the existence of the Divine Being, or his providen- 
tial and moral government. He would leave all this 
an open question in philosophy, and censures M. Comte 
for unwisely and unnecessarily encumbering the posi- 
tive philosophy with a religious prejudice, by avowing 
the opinion that mankind, when properly instructed, 
" would cease to refer the constitution of nature to an 
intelligent will, or to believe at all in a Creator and 

Supreme Governor of the world It is one of 

Comte's mistakes that he never allows of open ques- 
tions," says Mill. " The positive mode of thought is 
not necessarily a denial of the supernatural ; it merely 
throws back that question to the origin of things. If 
the universe had a beginning, its beginning, by the 

1 Examination of Mill, pp. 424, 425. 2 Comte, etc., p. 138. 



MILL VERSUS HAMILTON. 



103 



very conditions of the case, was supernatural ; the 
laws of nature cannot account for their origin. The 
positive philosopher is free to form his opinion on this 
subject according to the weight he attaches to the 
analogies which are called works of design, and to the 
general traditions of the human race. The value of 
these evidences is indeed a question for positive philos- 
ophy ; but it is not one on which positive philosophers 
must necessarily be agreed." 

It would be interesting to know on which side of this 
open question Mr. Mill himself stands — whether in his 
opinion the universe had a beginning and a beginner 
or not. On this he gives ns no light, but only informs 
us that if we see fit to believe in a God, we can do so 
without necessarily renouncing or coming into conflict 
with philosophy ; though for himself he does not con- 
sider such a belief at all essential to religion. 

In his Treatise on Liberty he speaks in high terms 
of the doctrines and precepts of Christ, but pronounces 
them incomplete as a system of ethics for the world. 
He thinks that " many essential elements of the highest 
morality are not provided for, nor intended to be pro- 
vided for, in the recorded deliverances of the Founder 
of Christianity, and which have been entirely thrown 
aside in the system of ethics erected on the basis of 
those deliverances by the Christian church. And this 
being so, I think it a great error to persist in attempt- 
ing to find in the Christian doctrine that complete rule 
for our guidance which its Author intended to sanction 
and enforce, but only partially to provide. I believe 
that other ethics than any which can be evolved exclu- 
sively from Christian sources must exist side by side 
with Christian ethics to produce the moral regenera- 



104 



STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY. 



tion of mankind." 1 As an instance of this deficiency, 
he specifies the duty which we owe to the state as one 
which in. the Christian ethics " is scarcely noticed or 
acknowledged " ! We fear Mr. Mill has not studied 
the Christian ethics as carefully as he might, or he 
would hardly have ventured such an assertion. 

Such, then, is the philosophy of Mr. Mill in its 
religious bearings. While not denying the doctrine of 
the divine existence and the great truths of the Chris- 
tian system, it neither gives nor professes to give us 
any aid in establishing these truths. The best it can 
do is to leave the whole matter of the divine existence 
and the divine government of the world an open ques- 
tion ; while it silently undermines and rejects some of 
the strongest arguments by which these positions have 
hitherto been maintained. For itself, it does not con- 
sider it at all essential to the interests of religion and 
the moral culture of the race that these truths should 
be maintained or believed. There may be a religion, 
efficient for all practical purposes, without a God. If 
admitted, the Christian system is ethically incomplete 
and insufficient, requiring to be supplemented. 

We have noticed in the preceding pages some of the 
defects of Mr. Mill's system, as it strikes us. To sum 
up the matter in a few words : He gives us a philosophy 
without first principles, a cosmology without a material 
world, a psychology without a soul, and a theology 
without a God. 

But it is time to notice in turn the errors of the 
system which Mr. Mill so strenuously opposes. 



i Liberty, pp. 91, 92. 



MILL VERSUS HAMILTON. 



105 



DEFECTS OF HAMILTON. 

There are, it must be conceded, certain errors and 
inconsistencies, not so much of the system of Hamilton, 
for they are not essential to that, as of the individual 
thinker ; which are to be regretted nevertheless as 
defects, more or less serious, in the philosophical specu- 
lations of this remarkable man. Some of these have 
been pointed out by Mr. Mill, some of them previously 
by other writers. 

1. Hamilton's theory of causation; this we cannot 
but regard as essentially defective. He attributes this 
idea to the mind's inability to conceive the absolute 
commencement of anything, the absolute beginning of 
existence, or its absolute end. The belief that every 
event has a cause, instead of being a special principle 
of our nature, an intuition of the mind, arises, according 
to this view, " not from a power, but from an impotence 
of mind." We regard this theory, and the reasoning 
by which it is sustained, as wholly unsatisfactory and 
erroneous. We do not, in fact, as Hamilton supposes, 
conceive the Deity as in creation evolving existence out 
of himself, but rather as calling it into being out of 
nothing. True, we cannot comprehend this, nor even 
represent it to ourselves in thought as taking place, but 
it is our idea of what does occur in creation, it is what 
we understand by that term. We deny that there is 
any such impotence of the mind as that referred to ; 
and we deny that if there were it would adequately 
account for that principle of the human mind which 
leads it everywhere and always to demand a cause for 
every event. 

To resolve this principle, as Hamilton does, into an 



106 



STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY. 



inability to conceive an absolute beginning, is a most 
unfortunate solution of the problem, since according to 
one of the established maxims of this philosophy, that 
may be true which" is to us inconceivable, and so there 
may be, after all, such a thing as absolute beginning 
of existence, or, in the Hamiltonian sense, events 
without a cause. There is no certitude, then, of a 
first cause, only an inability on our part to conceive of 
events uncaused ; which inability, however, is no proof 
that such events do not occur. 

2. Nor can we regard the Hamiltonian theory of the 
will as more satisfactory than his account of the prin- 
ciple of causation. The two theories in fact stand very 
closely connected. For the same reason above men- 
tioned, namely, that we cannot conceive an actual 
commencement, it is also impossible, says Hamilton, 
to conceive a free volition, for that would be a volition 
without a cause, an absolute commencement. We 
have, however, the testimony of consciousness in favor 
of freedom, and so accept the fact while admitting it to 
be inconceivable. To this view of the matter we wholly 
object. A free volition is not a volition without a 
cause, nor is it in any way or for any reason, a thing 
inconceivable. It is wholly a false idea of freedom to 
conceive of it as something inconsistent with the idea 
of cause, inconsistent with the influence of motives, 
inconsistent with any influence, tendency, inclination 
whatever, for or against a given object. Nothing can 
be more absurd or more contrary to fact than such a 
conception of freedom. Yet it is throughout Sir 
William Hamilton's idea. Free-will is inconceivable, 
he maintains, first and chiefly, as already stated, for 
the reason that it supposes a volition without a cause, 



MILL VERSUS HAMILTON. 



107 



that is an absolute beginning, which is inconceivable, 
and furthermore, for the additional reason that the will 
is determined by motives, and " a determination by 
motives cannot to our understanding escape from 
necessitation." 

It is of no use to reply, with Reid and other advo- 
cates of free-will, that motives are not of the nature of 
causes, that they influence, but do not cause or deter- 
mine, the mind's action. " If motives influence to 
action," replies Hamilton, " they must co-operate in 
producing a certain effect upon the agent, and the 
determination to act, and to act in a certain manner, 
is that effect." They are therefore causes, and cause 
is necessity. Against this idea of what constitutes 
freedom we earnestly and stoutly, protest, as wholly 
unfounded and untrue to the facts of the case. The 
thing really inconceivable is not the doctrine of free- 
will, but how such an idea of freedom as that now 
described could ever come to be entertained by a mind 
so clear and penetrating as Sir William Hamilton's. 1 
Such surely is not the freedom to which consciousness 
testifies, and which our moral accountability demands. 
The volitions of which our consciousness testifies, that 
they are free, are not volitions uncaused and unde- 
termined, but such as the mind has itself put forth in 
the full and free exercise of its own powers, in view of 
motives, and the manifold influences that surround it, 
and constitute the circumstances of its action. Under 
these influences the mind acts, and acts as it does, 
but still with full power and consciousness of power to 
an opposite choice. This is all the freedom we know 
anything of in consciousness, and such freedom is per- 

1 It must be conceded, however, that in this he was but following Kant. 



108 



STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY. 



fectly conceivable, because matter-of-fact and constantly 
recurring history. 

But Hamilton will have it that these influences 
which lead the mind to act as it does are veritable 
causes, and not merely reasons of the mind's action, 
and as causes are of the nature of necessity. " On the 
supposition that the sum of influences (motives, dispo- 
sitions, and tendencies) to volition A is equal to twelve, 
and the sum of influences to counter-volition B equal 
to eight, can we conceive," he asks, " that the deter- 
mination of volition A should not be necessary ? " 
That, we reply, is precisely what we can and do con- 
ceive. Actual, the volition A may be, and will be, in 
the case supposed — actual, but not necessary. The 
certainty of an event and the necessity of an event are 
two different things, — a distinction constantly overlooked 
by Hamilton in common with Mill and most writers of 
the necessitarian school, as well as many of the advo- 
cates of free-will. The certainty of an action may 
result from the impossibility of its not occurring, in 
which case the act is one of necessity ; or it may result 
from other causes, in which case there is no necessity. 
In the case supposed, where the influences which tend 
to volition A greatly preponderate, it may be quite 
certain that A and not B will be the actual choice of 
the mind ; but still with no impossibility of choosing B ; 
on the contrary a distinctly recognized and felt possi- 
bility of it ; therefore no necessity. 

We have long felt that an intelligent and valid 
defence of the doctrine of free-will is utterly impossible 
on any such ground, and any such notion of what 
freedom is, as that assumed by Sir William Hamilton. 
It was by no means difficult for an antagonist so acute 



MILL YERSUS HAMILTON. 



109 



as Mr. Mill, following in his wake and adopting his 
premises, — understanding by freedom, as he does, 
the entire absence of any such thing as cause or influ- 
ence, whether of motive, disposition, character, or any 
other source ; and by necessity all connection of voli- 
tion with any preceding cause, motive, or influence 
whatever, — with these ideas and concessions as to the 
nature of freedom and necessity, nothing was easier, 
we say, than for Mr. Mill to show that there is no 
ground for the doctrine of liberty to stand upon, and 
that the arguments of Hamilton in defence of free-will 
are inconclusive and untenable. 1 

3. There are some other matters of less importance 
in which we cannot but think the positions of Hamilton 
erroneous. His theory of the general conditions which 
determine the existence of pleasure and pain ; namely, 
that these emotions are the result, the one of the spon- 
taneous and unimpeded exertion of conscious power, 
the other of the overstrained or repressed exertion of 
such power, — is an explanation of the matter which, 
however applicable to the pains and pleasures of intel- 
lectual and physical activity, will by no means apply 
to the much larger class of painful and pleasurable 
feelings which are organic and passive. This Mill has 
acutely shown by reference to the sense of taste, as 
exercised on objects sweet or acrid or bitter ; all which 
equally answer the conditions of the theory, but by 
no means produce equally pleasurable results. 2 

The theory of unconscious mental modifications, 
while it may very probably be true, seems to us hardly 
established by the arugments which Hamilton gives in 

1 See note (B.) at the end of this Article. 

2 Examination of Hamilton, pp. 257-259. 



110 



STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY. 



its favor. The instances to which he refers as evidences 
of such modification may quite as readily be explained 
on the hypothesis of Stewart, that the missing trains of 
thought were once present in consciousness, but have 
subsequently been forgotten. 

Again, whatever may be thought of Sir William 
Hamilton's application of the term " consciousness " 
to denote the knowledge of objects external to self, as 
well as of what passes within the mind, it is certainly 
inconsistent to maintain, as he does, that " conscious- 
ness comprehends every cognitive act, in other words, 
whatever we are not conscious of, that we do not 
know," and still to deny that in an act of memory we 
have a consciousness of the past. If consciousness is 
limited to immediate knowledge, exclusive of the past 
and the absent, then it is not true that it comprehends 
every cognitive act. 1 

A similar inconsistency, as Mr. Mill is not slow to 
discover, occurs in the definition of logic as " the 
science of the laws of thought as thought," or, " the 
science of the necessary forms of thought," while at the 
same time, as subsequently explained, the laws in 
question prove to be not necessary laws at all, but 
such as may be violated at pleasure — not necessary to 
all thought, but only to all valid or correct thought. 2 

Many of these inconsistencies and discrepancies which 
Mr. Mill has enumerated are doubtless owing to the fact 
that the different parts of his system are not carefully 
adjusted to each other. It is, as Masson has expressed 
it, " a philosophy of imperfect junctions. One doctrine 
pursued at one time does not always meet or lead into 
another pursued at another time, or seem as if it could 

1 Examination of Hamilton, i. p. 144. 2 Ibid. ii. pp. 144, 145. 



MILL VERSUS HAMILTON. 



Ill 



meet or lead into it." Mr. Mill compares this character- 
istic of the system to what might happen in the operation 
of tunnelling Mount Cenis, were the workmen simulta- 
neously approaching from each end to tunnel past each 
other in tho dark, instead of meeting exactly in the 
middle. One cause of this incompleteness may have 
been, as Mr. Mill himself suggests, " the enormous 
amount of time and mental vigor, which he expended 
in mere philosophical erudition, leaving, it may be said, 
only the remains of his mind for the real business of 
thinking." In part also it is due to the fact that his 
Lectures, hastily written in the first instance, had not 
the benefit of his own revision and publication, but were 
edited by Professors Veitch and Mansel after his death. 
Meanwhile, during the twenty years which followed, his 
system was becoming more thoroughly matured and 
more carefully elaborated, his notes and dissertations 
appended to his edition of Reid were published, contain- 
ing his ripest and maturest thoughts, not always coin- 
ciding, however, in form and phraseology, not always 
perhaps in idea and doctrine, with his earlier views as 
expressed in the Lectures. Had he lived to revise his 
own works for publication, much of this imperfect 
adjustment would doubtless have been remedied. 

In conclusion, while we would by no means deny or 
overlook the faults of Sir William Hamilton as a philos- 
opher, some of which we have now indicated, we cannot 
regard them as essential to, nor at all destructive of, his 
general system. On the contrary, his main positions are 
right, and abundantly capable of defence, notwithstand- 
ing the errors in question ; while, on the other hand, 
the position of his critics and antagonists are funda- 
mentally erroneous. It has been said of him, with 



112 



STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY. 



entire justice, by one who, while admiring, takes the 
liberty to differ freely, that " notwithstanding incon- 
gruities in some parts of his system, he has furnished 
more valuable contributions to speculative philosophy 

than any other British writer in this century 

More than any other Englishman, Scotchman, or Irish- 
man for the last two centuries, he has wiped away the 
reproach from British philosophy, that it is narrow and 
insular. . For years past ordinary authors have seemed 
learned, and for years to come will seem learned, by 
drawing from his stores." As regards the influence of 
his speculative system over British thought, it is suf- 
ficient to point to the fact that the chairs of philosophy 
in three, at least, out of four Scottish universities are 
filled by his disciples, viz. Professor Fraser of Edin- 
burgh, Veitch of Glasgow, and Baynes of St. Andrews ; 
while McCosh of Queen's College, Belfast, is in the 
main Hamiltonian, and Mansel of Oxford decidedly so ; 
while among the great writers as well as scholars of 
Great Britain not a few names of eminence are on the 
list of his disciples — among the number, that of Dr. 
John Cairnes of Berwick-upon-Tweed, and of Masson, 
not the least — with whose words of glowing tribute to 
the master, we close this sketch. 

" Although Hamilton is no more in the midst of us 
Hamiltonianism is not defunct. But why should I say 
Hamiltonianism ? All our British speculative thought, 
in every corner where intellect is still receptive and 
fresh, has been affected, at least posthumously, by the 
influence of that massive man of the bold look and the 
clear hazel eye, whose library lamp might have been 
seen nightly, a few years ago, by late stragglers in one 
of the streets of Edinburgh, burning far into the night, 



MILL VERSUS HAMILTON. 



113 



when tne rest of the city was asleep. Oh, our miser- 
able judgments ! Here was a man probably unique in 
Britain ; but Britain was not running after him, nor 
thinking of him, but was occupied, as she always is, and 
always will be, with her temporary concerns and her 
riff-raff of temporary notabilities. And now one has to 
dig one's way to the best of him through the small type 
columns of perhaps the most amorphous book ever 
issued from the British press. But some have done this 
who had no inducement to do so, except their love of 
ideas, wherever they were to be found. Mill and Bain, 
who are fundamentally opposed to Hamilton's Transcen- 
dentalism, and Spencer, who is certainly not a Hamilton- 
ian, all acknowledge their respect for Hamilton, and the 

obligations of British thought to his labor But 

try him by any standard. What a writer he was ! What 
strength and nerve in his style ; what felicity in new phi- 
losophical expressions ! Throw that aside, and try him 
even in respect of the importance of his effects on the 
national thought. Whether from his learning, or by 
reason of his independent thinkings, was it not he that 
hurled into the midst of us the very questions of meta- 
physics, and the very forms of those questions, that have 
become the academic theses everywhere in this British 
age, for real metaphysical discussion " ? 1 

1 Recent British Philosophy, pp. 217, 252. 
8 



114 



STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY. 



NOTES. 



Note A. — Page 92. 

The essential features of Mr. Mill's system are quite accurately 
portrayed in the following humorously sarcastic lines from Black- 
wood for August 1866 : 

" His system by some very shallow is reckoned, 
Three facts, or three fallacies, fill up his cast : 
Sensation comes first, reeollection is second, 
And then expectation, the third and the last. 
We feel something present 
That's painful or pleasant ; 
We repeat or recall it by memory's skill : 
What happened before, sir, 
We look for once more, sir, 
And that's the whole soul of the great Stuart Mill. 

" At a glimpse of things real we never arrive, 
Nor at any fixed truth we try to explore, 
In some different world two and two may make five, 
Though appearances here seem to say they make four. 
Our mental formation 
Has small operation ; 
The mind — if we have one — is passive and still ■ 
We are ruled by our senses, 
Through all our three tenses, 
Past, present, and future, says great Stuart Mill. 



" What's called right and wrong, sir, 

Is just an old song, sir ; 
Ne'er tell me of duty, good actions, or ill ; 

Being useful or not, sir, 

Determines the lot, sir ; 
So Bentham found out, and so thinks Stuart Mill." 



MILL VERSUS HAMILTON. 



115 



Note B. — Page 109. 

In common with Edwards and most necessitarians, Mr. Mill un- 
derstands by necessity simple certainty of an event, the sure and 
invariable connection of a volition with its appropriate moral cause 
in the shape of motive or influence ; necessity in any other sense he 
distinctly disclaims. " A volition," he says, " is a moral effect which 
follows the corresponding moral causes as certainly and invariably 
as physical effects follow the physical causes. Whether it must do 
so, 1 acknowledge myself to be- entirely ignorant, be the phenome- 
non moral or physical ; and I condemn accordingly the word neces- 
sity as applied to either case. All I know is that it always does." 
And again : " If necessity means more than this abstract possibility 
of being foreseen ; if it means any mysterious compulsion, apart from 
simple invariability of sequence, I deny it as strenuously as any 
one" (Examination of Hamilton, Vol. ii. pp. 281, 300). 



III. 



THE MORAL FACULTY. 1 

The subject proposed is one of which it would not 
be easy to decide which is the greater, the importance 
or the difficulty. Its importance is seen in the fact 
that it concerns, at once, the psychologist who would 
explain the laws of the human mind ; the moralist 
who would propound a system of ethical truth ; the 
theologian who would base his doctrines on a correct 
philosophy of mind and of morals ; and," more than all, 
the individual man who seeks to conform in the prac- 
tical government of the conduct to the dictates of his 
moral nature. Its difficulty is apparent from the fact 
that it has for so long a period employed the energies 
of the ablest minds, giving rise to so many questions, 
so many discussions, by so many writers, with conclu- 
sions so diverse. 

In entering upon the investigation of this subject 
it is hardly necessary to raise the preliminary inquiry, 
as to the existence of a moral faculty in man. That 
we do possess the power of making moral distinctions, 
that we do discriminate between the right and the 
wrong in human conduct, is an obvious fact in the 
history and psychology of the race. Consciousness, 
observation, the forms of language, the literature of 

1 From the Bibliotheca Sacra for April, 1856, Vol. xiii. No. 50. 
116 



THE MORAL FACULTY. 



117 



the world, the usages of society, all attest and con- 
firm this truth. We are conscious of the operation of 
this principle in ourselves whenever we contemplate 
our own conduct or that of others. We find ourselves, 
involuntarily and as by instinct, pronouncing this act 
to be right ; that, wrong. We recognize the obligation 
to do, or to have done, otherwise. We approve, or 
condemn. We are sustained by the calm sense of that 
self-approval, or cast down by the fearful strength and 
bitterness of that remorse. And what we find in our- 
selves we observe also in others. In like circumstances 
they recognize the same distinctions and exhibit the 
same emotions. At the story or the sight of some 
flagrant injustice and wrong, the child and the savage 
are not less indignant than the philosopher. Nor is 
this a matter peculiar to one age or people. The lan- 
guages and the literature of the world indicate that 
at all times, and among all nations, the distinction be- 
tween right and wrong has been recognized and felt. 
The to hiiccuov and to kclKov of the Greeks, the honestum 
and the pulchrum of the Latins, are specimens of a 
class of words to be found in all languages, the proper 
use and significance of which is to express the distinc- 
tions in question. 

Since, then, we do unquestionably recognize moral 
distinctions, it is clear that we have a moral faculty. 
For a faculty is simply the power of doing something ; 
and if we find ourselves in possession and use of the 
power we conclude that we have the faculty. 

Without further consideration of this point we pass 
at once to the investigation of the subject itself. Our 
inquiries relate principally to the nature and authority 
of this faculty. On these points it is hardly necessary 



118 



STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY. 



to say, great difference of opinion has existed among 
philosophers and theologians, and grave questions have 
arisen. What is this faculty as exercised — a judg- 
ment, a process of reasoning, or an emotion ? Does it 
belong to the rational, or sensitive part of our nature 
— to the domain of intellect, or of feeling, or both ? 
What is the source and origin of these ideas ? How 
come we by them ? What constitutes, in what consists, 
the right and the wrong of actions — what is the differ- 
ence ? Wliat is the ground of our obligation to do, or 
not to do, any given thing ? What is the value and 
correctness of our moral perceptions, and especially of 
that verdict of approbation or censure which we pass 
upon ourselves and others, according as the conduct 
conforms to or violates recognized obligation ? Such 
are some of the questions which have arisen respecting 
the nature and authority of conscience. 

A careful analysis of the phenomena of conscience, 
with a view to determine the several elements or 
mental processes that constitute its operation, and then 
a careful examination of those several elements in their 
order, may aid us in the solution of these questions. 



ANALYSIS OF AN ACT OF CONSCIENCE. 

Whenever the conduct of intelligent and rational 
beings is made the subject of contemplation, whether 
the act thus contemplated be our own, or anothers, and 
whether it be an act already performed, or only pro- 
posed, we are cognizant of certain ideas awakened in 
the mind, and of certain impressions made upon it. 

First of all, the act contemplated strikes us as right 



THE MORAL FACULTY. 



119 



or wrong. This involves a double element — an idea, 
and a perception or judgment. The idea of right and 
its opposite are, in the mind, simple ideas, and therefore 
indefinable. In the act contemplated we recognize the 
one or the other of these simple elements, and pro- 
nounce it, accordingly, a right or a wrong act. This 
is simply a judgment, a perception, an exercise of the 
understanding. 

No sooner is this idea, this cognition, of the Tightness 
or wrongness of the given act, fairly entertained by the 
mind, than another idea, another cognition, presents 
itself, given along with the former, and inseparable 
from it, viz. that of obligation to do, or not to do, the 
given act; the ought and the ought not — also simple 
ideas, and indefinable. This applies equally to the 
future and to the past, to ourselves and to others : I 
ought to do the thing ; I ought to have done it yester- 
day. He ought, or ought not, to do, or to have done 
it. This, like the former, is an intellectual act, a per- 
ception or cognition of a truth, of a reality, for which 
we have the same voucher as for any other reality or 
apprehended fact, viz. the reliability of our mental 
faculties in general, and the correctness of their opera- 
tion in the specific instance. 

There follows a third element, logically distinct, but 
chronologically inseparable, from the preceding: the 
cognition of merit or demerit in connection with the 
deed, of good or ill desert, and the consequent approval 
or disapproval of the deed and the doer. This also 
is an intellectual perception, an exercise of judgment, 
giving sentence that the contemplated act is, or is not, 
meritorious, and awarding praise or blame accordingly. 

This completes the process. I can discover nothing 



120 



STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY. 



in the operation of my mind, in view of moral action, 
which does not resolve itself into some one of these 
elements. 

Viewed in themselves, these are strictly intellectual 
operations; the recognition of the right, the recognition 
of obligation, the perception of good or ill desert, are 
all properly acts of the intellect. Each of these cog- 
nitive acts, however, involves a corresponding action of 
the sensibilities. The perception of the right awakens 
in the pure and virtuous mind feelings of pleasure, 
admiration, love. The idea of obligation becomes, in 
its turn, through the awakened sensibilities, an impulse 
and motive to action. The recognition of good or ill 
desert awakens feelings of esteem and complacency, or 
the reverse ; fills the soul with sweet peace, or stings it 
with sharp remorse. All these things must be recog- 
nized and included by the psychologist among the 
phenomena of conscience. These emotions, however, 
are based on, and grow out of, the intellectual acts 
already named, and are to be viewed as an incidental 
and subordinate, though by no means unimportant, 
part of the whole process. When we speak of con- 
science or the moral faculty, we speak of a power, a 
faculty, and not merely a feeling or susceptibility of 
being affected. It is a cognitive power, having to do 
with realities, recognizing real distinctions, and not 
merely a passive play of the sensibilities. It is anal- 
ogous to the power of memory, which gives us the 
actual past ; of perception, which gives the actual 
present as external and material ; of imagination, 
which gives us the ideal. Like these, it has its own 
proper sphere and province, logically distinct from all 
others. Like these, it brings before us what we should 



THE MORAL FACULTY. 



121 



not otherwise know. It is simply the mind's power of 
recognizing a certain class of truths and relations. As 
such, we claim for it a place among the strictly cogni- 
tive powers of the mind, among the faculties that have 
to do with the perception of truth and reality. 

This is a point of some importance. If, with certain 
writers, we make the moral faculty a matter of mere 
feeling, overlooking the intellectual perceptions on 
which this feeling is based, we overlook and leave out 
of the account the chief elements of the process. The 
moral faculty is no longer a cognitive power, no longer, 
in truth, a faculty. The distinctions which it seems to 
recognize are merely subjective; impressions, feelings, 
to which there may, or may not, be a corresponding 
reality. We have at least no evidence of any such 
reality. Such a view subtracts the very foundation of 
morals. Our feelings vary ; but right and wrong do 
not vary with our feelings. They are objective realities, 
and not subjective phenomena. As such the mind, by 
virtue of the natural powers with which it is endowed 
by the Creator, recognizes them. The power by which 
it does this we call the moral faculty ; just as we call 
its power to take cognizance of another class of truths 
and relations, viz. the beautiful, its aesthetic faculty. 
In view of these truths and relations, as thus perceived, 
certain feelings are in either case awakened, and these 
emotions may with propriety be regarded as pertaining 
to, and part of the phenomena of conscience and of taste. 
Full discussion of either of these faculties will include 
the action of the sensibilities ; but in neither case will 
a true psychology resolve the faculty into the feeling. 
The mathematician experiences a certain feeling of 
delight in perceiving the relation of lines and angles ; 



122 



STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY. 



but the power of perceiving that relation, the faculty 
by which the mind takes cognizance of such truth, is 
not to be resolved into the feeling that results from it. 

As the result of our analysis, we obtain the following 
elements, as involved in and constituting an operation 
of the moral faculty : 

L The mental perception that a given act is right or 
wrong. 

II. The perception of obligation with respect to the 
same, as right or wrong. 

III. The perception of merit or demerit, and the 
consequent approbation or censure of the agent, as 
doing the right or the wrong thus perceived. 

Accompanying these intellectual perceptions, and 
based upon them, are certain corresponding emotions, 
varying in intensity according to the clearness of the 
mental perceptions and the purity of the moral nature. 

As we proceed now to discuss, more in detail, these 
various elements which the preceding analysis has 
furnished, the several questions already suggested will 
naturally present themselves for consideration. 

As to the perception of the moral quality of actions, 
it will be in place to inquire : What is the origin of 
such perception on our part ; whence we derive our 
ideas of right or wrong ; how we come to make such 
a distinction. 

As to the element of obligation, it will be in place to 
inquire what is the ground of such obligation 

As to the decision of approval or condemnation, it 
will be pertinent to consider what is the value, and 
what the power, of such verdict. 

To these points, accordingly, our attention will be 
mainly directed as we proceed to examine, one by 



THE MORAL FACULT1 . 



123 



one, in their order, the several mental processes now 
indicated. 

I. The Perception of an Act as Right or Wrong. 

TVhen we direct our attention to any given instance 
of the conduct and voluntary action of any intelligent 
and rational being, we not unfrequently find ourselves 
pronouncing upon its character as a right or wrong act. 
Especially is this the case when the act contemplated is 
of a marked and unusual character. The question at 
once arises, Is it right ? Or, it may be, without the 
consciousness of even a question respecting it, our 
decision follows instantly upon the mental apprehension 
of the act itself: this thing is right, this thing is wrong. 
Our decision may be correct or incorrect ; our percep- 
tion of the real nature of the act may be clear or 
obscure ; it may make a stronger or a weaker impres- 
sion on the mind, according to our mental habits, the 
tone of our moral nature, and the degree to which we 
have cultivated the moral faculty. There may be 
minds so degraded, and natures so perverted, that the 
moral character of an act shall be quite mistaken, or 
quite overlooked in many cases ; or when perceived, it 
shall make little impression on them. Even in such 
minds, however, the idea of right and wrong still finds 
a place, and the understanding applies it, though not 
perhaps always correctly, to particular instances of 
human conduct. There is no reason to believe that 
any mind possessing ordinary endowments, those de- 
grees of reason and intelligence which nature usually 
bestows, is destitute of this idea, or fails altogether to 
apply it to its own acts, and those of others. 

But whence come these ideas and perceptions — their 
origin? How is it, why is it, that we pronounce an 



124 



STUDIES IX PHILOSOPHY. 



act right or wrong, when once fairly apprehended ? 
How come we by these notions ? The fact is admitted ; 
the explanations vary. By one class of writers our 
ideas of this nature have been ascribed to education 
and fashion; by another, to legal restriction, human or 
divine. Others, again, viewing these ideas as the 
offspring of nature, have assigned them either to the 
operation of a special sense, given for this specific pur- 
pose, as the eye for vision ; or to the joint action of 
certain associated emotions ; while others regard them 
as originating in an exercise of judgment, and others 
still as natural intuitions of the mind, or reason exer- 
cised on subjects of a moral nature. 

The main question is, Are these ideas natural, or 
artificial and acquired? If the latter, are they the 
result of education, or of legal restraint? If the 
former, are they to be referred to the sensibilities, as 
the result of a special sense, or of association, or to the 
intellect, as the result of the faculty of judgment, or as 
intuitions of reason ? 

% Come they from education and imitation? So 
Locke, Paley, and others have supposed. Locke was 
led to take this view by tracing, as he did, all simple 
ideas, except those of our own mental operations, to 
sensation, as their source. This allows, of course, no 
place for the ideas of right and wrong, which, accord- 
ingly, he concluded, cannot be natural ideas, but must 
be the result of education. 

Now it is to be conceded that education and fashion 
are powerful instruments in the culture of the mind. 
Their influence is not to be overlooked in estimating 
the causes that shape and direct the opinions of men 
and the tendencies of an age. But they do not account 



THE MORAL FACULTY. 



25 



for the origin of anything. This has been ably and 
clearly shown by Dugald Stewart, in answer to Locke ; 
and it is a sufficient answer. Education and imitation 
both presuppose the existence of moral ideas and dis- 
tinctions — the very things to be accounted for. How 
came they who first taught these distinctions, and they 
who first set the example of making such distinctions, 
to be themselves in possession of these ideas ? Whence 
did they derive them ? Who taught them, and set them 
the example ? This is a question not answered by the 
theory now under consideration. It gives us, therefore, 
and can give us, no account of the origin of the ideas 
in question. 

2. Do we then derive these ideas from legal restric- 
tion and enactment? So teach some able writers. 
Laws are made, human and divine, requiring us to do 
thus and thus, and forbidding such and such things, 
and hence we get our ideas originally of right and 
wrong. 

If this be so, then previous to all law there could 
have been no such ideas, of course. But does not law 
presuppose the idea of right and wrong ? Is it not 
built on that idea as its basis ? How then can it 
originate that on which itself depends, and which it 
presupposes ? The first law ever promulgated must 
have been either a just or an unjust law, or else of no 
moral character. If the latter, how could a law which 
was neither just nor unjust have suggested to the 
subjects of it any such ideas ? If the former, then these 
qualities, and the ideas of them, must have existed prior 
to the law itself, and whoever made the law, and con- 
ferred on it its character, must have had already in his 
own mind the idea of the right, and its opposite. It is 



12G 



STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY. 



evident that we cannot, in this way, account for the 
origin of the ideas in question. AVe are no nearer the 
solution of the problem than before. 

In opposition to the views now considered, we must 
regard the ideas in question as directly, or indirectly, 
the work of nature, and the result of our constitution. 
The question still remains, however, In which of the 
several ways indicated does this result take place ? 

3. Shall we attribute these ideas to a special sense? 
This is the view taken by Hutcheson and his followers. 
Ascribing, with Locke, all our simple ideas to sensa- 
tion, but not content with Locke's theory of moral 
distinctions as the result of education, he sought to 
account for them by enlarging the sphere of sensation, 
and introducing a new sense, whose specific office is to 
take cognizance of such distinctions. The tendency of 
this theory is evident. While it derives the idea of 
right, and its opposite, from our natural constitution, 
and is so far preferable to either of the preceding 
theories, still, in assigning them a place among the 
sensibilities, it seems to make morality a mere senti- 
ment, a matter of feeling merely, an impression made 
on our sentient nature — a mere subjective affair — as 
color and taste are impressions made on our organs of 
sense, and not properly qualities of bodies. As these 
affections of the sense do not exist independently, but 
only relatively to us, so moral distinctions, according 
to this view, are merely subjective affections of our 
minds, and not independent realities. 

Hume accedes to this general view, and carries it 
out to its legitimate results, making morality a mere 
relation between our nature and certain objects, and 
not an independent quality of actions. Virtue and 



THE MORAL FACULTY. 



127 



vice, like color and taste, the bright and the dull, the 
sweet and the bitter, lie merely in our sensations. 

These sceptical views had been advanced long pre- 
viously by the sophists, who taught that man is the 
measure of all things, that things are only what they 
seem to us. 

It is true, as Stewart has observed, that these views 
do not necessarily result from Hutcheson's theory, nor 
were they probably held by him ; but such is the 
natural ^tendency of his doctrine. The term sense, as 
employed by him, is in itself ambiguous, and may be 
used to denote a mental perception; but when we 
speak of a sense, we are understood to refer to that part 
of our constitution, which, when affected from without, 
gives us certain sensations. Thus the sense of hearing, 
the sense of vision, the sense of taste, of smell, etc. It 
is in this way that Hutcheson seems to have employed 
the term, and his illustrations all point in this direction. 
He was unfortunate, to say the least, in his use of 
terms, and in his illustrations ; unfortunate, also, in 
having such a disciple as Hume to push his theory to 
its legitimate results. 

If by a special sense he meant only a direct percep- 
tive power of the mind, then, doubtless, Hutcheson is 
right in recognizing such a faculty, and attributing to 
it the ideas under consideration. But that is not the 
proper meaning of the word sense, nor is that the sig- 
nification attached to it by his followers. But if he 
means by sense, what the word itself would indicate, 
some adaptation of the sensibilities to receive impres- 
sions from things without, analogous to that by which 
we are affected through the organs of sense, then, 
(1) It is not true that we have any such special faculty. 



128 



STUDIES IX PHILOSOPHY. 



There is no evidence of it ; nay, facts contradict it. 
There is no snch uniformity of moral impression or 
sensation as ought to manifest itself on this supposition. 
Men's eyes and ears are much alike in their activity, 
the world over. That which is white or red to one is 
not black to another or green to a third ; that which is 
sweet to one is not sour or bitter to another. At least, 
if such variations occur they are the result only of 
some unnatural and unusual condition of the organs. 
But it is otherwise with the operation of the so-called 
special sense. While all men have probably some idea 
of right and wrong, there is the greatest possible 
variety in its application to particular instances of 
conduct. What one approves as a virtue, another 
condemns as a crime. 

Nor (2) have we any need to call in the aid of a 
special sense to give us ideas of this kind. It is not 
true, as Locke and Hutcheson believed, that all our 
ideas, except those of our own mental operations or 
consciousness, are derived ultimately from sensation. 
We have ideas of the true and the beautiful, ideas of 
cause and effect, of geometrical and arithmetical rela- 
tions, and various other ideas, which it would be diffi- 
cult to trace to the senses as their source, and which, 
equally with the ideas of right and wrong, would 
require in that case a special sense for their production, 
i 4. Shall we then adopt the view of that class of 
ethical writers who account for the origin of these ideas 
by the principle of association ? Such men as Hartley, 
Mill, Mackintosh, and others of that stamp, are not 
lightly to be set aside in the discussion of such a ques- 
tion. Their view is that the moral perceptions are the 
result of certain combined antecedent emotions, such 



THE MORAL FACULTY. 



129 



as gratitude, piety, resentment, etc., which relate to 
the dispositions and actions of voluntary agents, and 
which very easily and naturally come to be transferred 
from the agent himself to the action in itself considered, 
or to the disposition which prompted it ; forming, when 
thus transferred and associated, what we call the moral 
feelings and perceptions. Just as avarice arises from 
the original desire, not of money, but of the things 
which money can procure ; which desire comes eventu- 
ally to be transferred from the objects themselves to 
the means and instrument of procuring them ; and, as 
sympathy arises from the transfer to others of the feel- 
ings which in like circumstances agitate our own bosoms, 
so, in like manner, by the principle of association, the 
feelings which naturally arise in view of the conduct of 
others are transferred from the agent to the act, from 
the enemy or the benefactor to the injury or the bene- 
faction, which acts stand afterward by themselves as 
objects of approval or condemnation. Hence the dis- 
position to approve all benevolent acts, and to condemn 
the opposite, which disposition, thus formed and trans- 
ferred, is a part of conscience. So of other elementary 
emotions. 

It will be perceived that this theory, which is indebted 
chiefly to Mackintosh for its completeness and scientific 
form, makes conscience wholly a matter of sentiment 
and feeling ; standing in this respect on the same ground 
with the theory of a special sense, and liable in part 
to the same objections. Hence the name sentimental 
school, often employed to designate collectively the ad- 
herents of each of these views. While the theory now 
proposed might then seem to offer a plausible account 
of the manner in which our moral sentiments arise, it 

9 



130 



STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY. 



does not account for the origin of our ideas and percep- 
tions of moral rectitude. Now the moral faculty is not 
mere sentiment. There is an intellectual perception 
of one thing as right and another as wrong ; and the 
question now before us is : Whence comes that percep- 
tion, and the idea on which it is based ? To resolve the 
whole matter into certain transferred and associated 
emotions, is to give up the inherent distinction of right 
and wrong as qualities of actions, and make virtue and 
vice creations of the sensibility, the play and product 
of the excited feelings. To admit the perception and 
idea of the right, and ascribe their origin to antecedent 
emotion, is moreover to reverse the natural order and 
law of psychological operation, which bases emotion on 
perception, and not perception on emotion. We do 
not first admire, love, hate, and then perceive, but the 
reverse. 

The view now under consideration, while it seems to 
resolve the moral faculty into mere feeling, thus mak- 
ing morality wholly a relative affair, makes conscience 
itself an acquired rather than a natural faculty, a sec- 
ondary process, a transformation of emotions, rather 
than itself an original principle. It does it moreover 
the further injustice of deriving its origin from the 
purely selfish principles of our nature. I receive a favor 
or an injury, hence I regard with certain feelings of 
complacency, or the opposite, the man who has thus 
treated me. These feelings I come gradually to trans- 
fer to, and associate with, the act in itself considered, 
and this with other acts of the same nature ; and so at 
last I come to have a moral faculty, and pronounce 
one thing right and another wrong. 

This view is quite inadmissible ; at variance with facts 



THE MORAL FACULTY. 



131 



and the well-known laws of the human mind. The 
moral faculty is one of the earliest to develop itself. It 
appears in childhood, manifesting itself, not as an ac- 
quired and secondary principle, the result of a compli- 
cated process of associated and transferred emotion, 
requiring time for its gradual formation and growth, 
but rather as an original instinctive principle of nature. 

Adam Smith, in his " Theory of Moral Sentiments," 
has proposed a view which falls properly under the 
general theory of association, and may be regarded as 
a modification of it. He attributes our moral percep- 
tions to the feeling of sympathy. To adopt the feelings 
of another is to approve them. If those feelings are 
such as would naturally be awakened in us by the same 
objects, we approve them as morally proper. Sympathy 
with the gratitude of one who has received a favor leads 
us to regard the benefaction as meritorious. Sympa- 
thy with the resentment of an injured man leads us to 
regard the injurer as worthy of punishment, and so the 
sense of demerit originates ; sympathy with the feelings 
of others respecting our own conduct, gives rise to self- 
approval and sense of duty. Rules of morality are 
merely a summary of these sentiments. 

Whatever credit may be due to this ingenious writer 
for calling attention to a principle which had not been 
sufficiently taken into account by preceding philoso- 
phers, we cannot but regard it as an insufficient expla- 
nation of the present case. In the first place we are 
not conscious of the element of sympathy in the decisions 
and perceptions of the moral faculty. We look at a 
given action as right or wrong, and approve of it or 
condemn it on that ground, because it is right or wrong, 
not because we sympathize with the feelings awakened 



.132 



STUDIES IS PHILOSOPHY. 



by the act in the minds of others. If the process now 
supposed intervened between our knowledge of the act 
and our judgment of its morality, we should know it 
and recognize it as a distinct element. 

Furthermore, sympathy, like other emotions, has no 
imperative character, and, even if it might be supposed 
to suggest to the mind some idea of moral distinctions, 
cannot of itself furnish a foundation for those feelings 
of obl'ujation which accompany and characterize the 
decisions of the moral faculty. 

But more than this, the view now taken makes the 
standard of right and wrong variable* and dependent on 
the feelings of men. We must know how others think 
and feel, how the thing affects them, before we can 
know whether a given act is right or wrong, to be 
performed or avoided. And then, furthermore, our 
feelings must agree with theirs ; there must be sympa- 
thy and harmony of views and feelings, else the result 
will not follow. If anything prevents us from knowing 
what arc the feelings of others with respect to a given 
course of conduct, or if for any reason we fail to sym- 
pathize with those feelings, we can have no conscience 
in the matter. As those feelings vary so will our moral 
perceptions vary. We have no fixed standard. There 
is no place left for right, as such, and absolutely. If no 
sympathy, then no duty, no right, no morality. 

We have, as yet, found no satisfactory explanation 
of the origin of our moral ideas and perceptions. They 
seem not to be the result of education and imitation, 
nor yet of legal enactment. They seem to be natural, 
rather than artificial and acquired. Yet we cannot 
trace them to the action of the sensitive part of our 
nature. They are not the product of a special sense, 



THE MORAL FACULTY. 



133 



nor yet of the combined and associated action of certain 
natural emotions, much less of any one emotion, as 
sympathy. And yet they are a part of our nature. 
Place man where you will, surround him with what 
influences you will, you still find in him, to some 
extent at least, indications of a moral nature ; a nature 
modified indeed by circumstances, but never wholly 
obliterated. Evidently we must refer the ideas in 
question, then, to the intellectual, since they do not 
belong to the sensitive, part of our nature. 

5. Are they, then, the product and operation of the 
faculty of judgment ? But the judgment does not orig- 
inate ideas. It compares, distributes, estimates, decides 
to what class and category a thing belongs, but creates 
nothing. I have in mind the idea of a triangle, a circle, 
etc. 80 soon as certain figures are presented to the 
eye, I refer them at once, by an act of judgment, to the 
class to which they belong. I affirm that to be a tri- 
angle, this a circle ; the judgment does this. But 
judgment does not furnish my mind with the primary 
idea of a circle. It deals with this idea already in 
the mind. So in our judgment of the beauty and de- 
formity of objects. The perception that a landscape 
or painting is beautiful, is, in one sense, an act of judg- 
ment ; but it is an act which presupposes the idea of 
the beautiful already in the mind that so judges. So 
also of moral distinctions. Whence comes the idea of 
right and wrong which lies at the foundation of every 
particular judgment as to the moral character of ac- 
tions ? This is the question before us still unanswered ; 
and to this there remains but one reply. 

6. The ideas in question are intuitive; suggestions 
or perceptions of reason. The view now proposed may 



134 



STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY. 



be thus stated : It is the office of reason to discern the 
right and the wrong, as well as the true and the false, 
the beautiful and the reverse. Regarded subjectively, 
as conceptions of the human mind, right and wrong, as 
well as beauty and its opposite, truth and its opposite, 
are simple ideas, incapable of analysis or definition — in- 
tuitions of reason. Regarded as objective, right and 
wrong are realities — qualities absolute and inherent in 
the nature of things, not fictitious, not the play of 
human fancy or human feeling, not relative merely to 
the human mind, but independent, essential, universal, 
absolute. As such, reason recognizes their existence. 
Judgment decides that such and such actions do possess 
the one or the other of these qualities — are right or 
wrong actions. There follows the sense of obligation 
to do or not to do, and the consciousness of merit or 
demerit as we comply, or fail to comply, with the same. 
In view of these perceptions emotions arise, but only 
as based upon them. The emotions do not, as the sen- 
timental school affirm, originate the idea, the perception ; 
but the idea, the perception, give rise to the emotions. 
We are so constituted as to feel certain emotions in 
view of the moral quality of actions, but the idea and 
perception of that moral quality must precede, and it is 
the office of reason to produce this. 

There are certain simple ideas which must be re- 
garded as first truths, or first principles, of the human 
understanding, essential to its operations, — ideas univer- 
sal, absolute, necessary. Such are the ideas of personal 
existence and identity; of time and space, as conditions 
of material existence ; of number, cause, and mathe- 
matical relation. Into this class fall the ideas of the 
true, the beautiful, the right, and their opposites. The 



THE MORAL FACULTY. 135 

» 

fundamental maxims of reasoning and morals find here 
their place. 

These are in a sense intuitive perceptions ; not strictly 
innate, yet connate ; the foundation for them being laid 
in our nature and constitution. So soon as the mind 
reaches a certain stage of development they present 
themselves. Circumstances may promote or retard 
their appearance. They depend on opportunity to fur- 
nish the occasion of their springing up, yet they are 
nevertheless the natural, spontaneous development of 
the human soul, as really a part of our nature, as are 
any of our instinctive impulses, or our mental attributes. 
They are a part of that native intelligence with which 
we are endowed by the Author of our being. These 
intuitions of ours, are not themselves the foundation of 
right and wrong ; they do not make one thing right 
and another wrong ; but they are simply the reason 
why we so regard them. Such we believe to be the 
true account of the origin of our moral perceptions. 

We have directed our attention, thus far, to the first 
of the several elements that constitute the moral faculty, 
viz. the perception of the right and wrong in actions. 
We proceed, now, to discuss the second of these elements 
or mental processes. 

II. The percejjtion of obligation. 

No sooner do we apprehend a given act as right or 
wrong, than we recognize, also, a certain obligation 
resting on us with respect to that act, either to do, or 
to avoid, the same. It is a conviction of the mind, 
inseparable from the perception of the right. Given : 
a clear perception of the one, and we cannot escape 
the other. The question arises here, what is the ground 
of this ought, what constitutes it ; what is that, in any 



136 STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY. 



given action, that imposes on me the obligation to do, 
or not to do, the same ? I ought to do this, and that. 
Why ought ? 

Whatever answer we may give to this question, we 
must come back ultimately to the simple position, we 
ought, because it is right ; the Tightness of a given course 
constitutes the obligation, on our part, to adhere to the 
same. Given : the one ; given, also, the other. The 
question, then, What constitutes obligation ? resolves 
itself into this : What constitutes right ? 

This is a question of no little moment. It nas re- 
ceived, at different times, and from different writers, 
widely different answers ; and these various answers 
constitute so many different theories of morals. They 
lead us over an interesting and important field of inquiry, 
involving one of the deepest and most difficult problems 
in the whole range of philosophy. 

This is altogether a distinct question from the one 
already discussed, though often confounded with it by 
ethical writers. The question is not, now : Whence 
our ideas of right? but, What makes right, what is 
right itself? It is quite possible that what is to me 
the source of the idea of right may not be the founda- 
tion of right itself. I derive my idea of time from the 
succession of events, my idea of space from extension ; 
but succession does not constitute time, nor extension 
space ; on the contrary, time is necessary to succession, 
and space to extension. The latter presuppose the 
former, and could not be without them. So with respect 
to moral distinctions : I may, or may not, be indebted 
for the idea of right, as it exists in my mind, to that 
which is the foundation of right itself. 

The principal theories of morals, or grounds of obliga- 



THE MORAL FACULTY. 



137 



tion proposed by different writers, may be reduced, 
perhaps, to these four : 1. Utility ; 2. Law ; 3. The 
nature and character of God ; 4. The eternal and im- 
mutable nature of things. Each of these has been 
regarded as the true ground on which to place the 
distinction of right and wrong, and the consequent 
moral obligation. The two former of these, again, have 
each a twofold aspect : Utility, as the ground of right, 
may denote either the hajjpiness, the pleasure accruing 
from a given course (which is itself a species of utility), 
or the more direct advantage resulting from it. Or, if 
we place the matter on the ground of legal enactment, 
the law which makes the right and the wrong may be 
man's law, or it may be God's. 

We have, then, these divergent paths opening before 
us, each proposing to conduct to the true solution of 
our problem, each trodden by many a mighty man in 
the domain of thought : the utilitarian theory with its 
twofold aspect, the pleasure and the advantage of the 
thing ; the legal theory, twofold also, as of human or 
Divine authority ; the theory which makes the Divine 
character the foundation of right; and, finally, that 
which bases it on the immutable and eternal nature of 
things. 

Let us, then, examine these several theories in their 
order : 

1. The utilitarian. Understanding by this term, in 
the first place, pleasure rather than advantage, the 
doctrine is this : the reason why we pronounce one 
thing right rather than another, is, that we find the one 
act to be attended, uniformly, with pleasure to the doer ; 
the other, with pain ; one contributes to his happiness, 
the other detracts from it. Now the pursuit of hap- 



138 



STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY. 



piness, it is contended, is the grand motive and spring 
of all human action ; and if it be once established that 
the actions which we call right are such as invariably 
to promote our happiness, no other reason need be 
assigned why we thus regard them. And this, it is 
contended, is the case. If we select any instance of 
what we call right action, we find it to be an action 
which is accompanied with pleasurable emotion. And 
this is the ground of our approval, the reason why we 
pronounce the action right. 

Now it is not to be denied, that to do right brings 
with it a present satisfaction and true happiness. Such 
is the constitution of our nature. The question is, 
whether this tendency to produce happiness is what 
makes a given act right. Is the thing right because it 
produces happiness ? or does it promote our happiness 
because it is right ? Which is the true statement ? 
When I pronounce some past act of my life to be right, 
and approve it as virtuous, is it because I remember 
that it gave me great pleasure ? and when I cherish 
the feeling of self-reproach and remorse in view of past 
conduct, is it on the ground that the given action was 
accompanied with unpleasant and painful sensations ? 

The simple statement of the question would seem 
sufficient. We feel, instinctively, that our decision and 
approval rest on far other and higher grounds. Virtue 
and happiness are by no means identical. We have 
different terms for them, and mean different things by 
them. The one cannot be resolved into the other. If 
it be true that all right things are pleasant, it does not 
follow that all pleasant things are right, much less that 
their pleasantness makes them right. Many are the 
propensities of a corrupt nature, the indulgence of 



THE MORAL FACULTY. 



139 



which is attended with present gratification, which still 
are evil and only evil ; and in their pleasantness con- 
sists the very strength of the temptation they present. 
The man who yields to the force of such temptations, 
however, by no means approves the course that he 
pursues. He goes to the commission of the wrong, 
not with a conviction that he is doing right, but under 
a protest from his conscience, and with a feeling of self- 
reproach and self-condemnation. This ought not to be, 
according to the theory now under consideration. He 
ought rather to approve his conduct on the ground that 
he was seeking therein his own happiness ; and his 
self-approval ought to rise and increase in proportion 
to the pleasure he receives. 

Nor is the case materially altered by substituting the 
happiness of others, in place of personal happiness, as 
the ground of right. No doubt right action contributes 
to the happiness of the community, and swells the sum 
total of the world's enjoyment ; but is it this that con- 
stitutes the rightness of the act ? Is the noble con- 
sciousness of doing right, with all its power to sustain 
the spirit of a man under the pressure of the heaviest 
calamities and the gloom of the darkest hour merely 
this : the conviction that, somehow, in consequence of 
what he has done, men will, on the whole, enjoy them- 
selves better ? Independent and irrespective of all such 
considerations, is there not a far nobler satisfaction in 
having done that which was right, in itself considered, 
and for its own sake ? 

The view now considered was the distinctive tenet 
of the ancient Epicurean philosophy ; and has been held 
in later times by Hume and Shaftesbury in England, 
and by their followers generally.. 



140 



STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY. 



Considering now utility as denoting advantage or 
expediency, we come upon somewhat different ground ; 
capable, however, of attack and defence by essentially 
the same arguments. In fact, the former view may be 
regarded as a modification of the latter, the one specific 
the other generic in its form ; pleasure being itself a 
species of advantage, at least in the opinion of those 
who make it the rule of right. Hence, very generally 
the advocates of the former view are advocates also of 
the latter. Still the latter is, of the two, the broader 
and higher ground. 

Self-love, according to this view, is the grand motive 
of human action. Men do what they think for their 
advantage. Now it is found by experience that a cer- 
tain coarse of conduct is for the advantage, and the 
opposite for the disadvantage, of the doer, and of all 
concerned. Hence they come to regard the one course 
as right, and to be pursued, the other as wrong, and to 
be avoided. In a word it is the utility or expediency 
of the thing that constitutes the ground and reason of 
its rightness. Such is the doctrine of Bentham and his 
followers. 

And here it is admitted on all sides, that virtuous 
action does contribute to the advantage, in many ways, 
of the doer. The question is, whether this is what makes 
it virtuous, whether this constitutes its rightness. Is it 
right because expedient, or expedient because right ? 

Let us see what follows from this theory. 

1. If expediency is the ground of right, then interest 
and duty are identical in idea, synonymes for the same 
thought. To prove a given action right, all that is 
necessary is to show that it is advantageous to the doer. 
The same act performed from the same motives, with 



THE MORAL FACULTY. 



141 



the same spirit and intentions, is right to one man and 
wrong to another ; nay, is right to one and the same 
man at one time, and wrong at another, according as it 
turns out for his advantage or not. We can never 
be sure that we are acting virtuously until we know 
how the action is to affect our personal interests. Men 
have acted from the highest and purest principles, yet 
have been in reality far from virtuous, because what 
they did proved not for their own interests. They 
ought therefore to cherish feelings of self-reproach and 
remorse in view of their conduct. 

2. It follows from this theory that there is no such 
thing as intentional wrong-doing. Men always act, it 
is said, from the principle of self-love. They do what 
they think is for their own advantage. Finding by 
experience that certain actions tend to their advantage, 
they come to regard such actions as right, and the 
opposite, for the same reason, as wrong. What have 
we here for a syllogism ! 

Man acts always with reference to his own good. To 
act with reference to one's own good, is to act right. 
Therefore, man invariably acts right! He may mis- 
take, and do what is in the end disadvantageous ; but 
it was a mistake, an error of judgment, and not an 
intentional wrong. This is, on the whole, a very favo- 
rable view of things, and may serve to relieve somewhat 
the sombre aspect in which the world and poor erring 
human nature present themselves to a certain class of 
minds. Men are not so bad, after all. They do as 
well as they know how. They mean to be selfish and 
to consult their own interests, and if they sometimes 
come short of duty in this respect, it is an error of the 
head and not of the heart. 



142 



STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY. 



3. It follows, also, that there is no such thing as dis~ 
interested virtue. Utility is the ground of rectitude, 
the foundation of obligation. "We ought, therefore, to 
give a man credit for his conduct, just in proportion as 
we perceive him to have been governed throughout by 
a regard to his own personal advantage. To act thus 
is to act right, and to comply with the claims of duty. 
There can be no virtue which springs not from this 
source. The more fully a man promotes his own 
interests and seeks his own personal advantage in all 
he does, provided only there be no direct violation 
of the rights of others, the higher esteem ought we to 
cherish for that man in our hearts. On the other hand, 
where an action is of such a nature that we are not 
quite sure whether the man was really seeking his own 
advantage, or that of others, in what he did, we ought to 
withhold our approbation. 

But, strange to say, selfish as the world is, it does 
not so decide. It does sensibly diminish our moral 
approbation of any act to see, or suspect even, that self- 
interest was the leading motive of conduct ; it heightens 
our admiration and esteem to perceive that the act was 
performed without the least regard to that, but from 
entirely different motives. 

And this leads us to remark, in general, that the 
theory under consideration contradicts the facts of 
consciousness. If utility were the ground of moral obli- 
gation, the foundation of right, then whenever we 
recognize such obligation we should be conbdous of 
this clement as the basis of it ; should be conscious of 
perceiving the tendency of the given act to promote the 
personal happiness or the personal advantage of the 
doer, and that our conviction of obligation in the case 



THE MORAL FACULTY. 



143 



arose from that circumstance ; whereas, in fact, we arc 
conscious of no such thing, but, in many cases, of 
directly the reverse. The sense of obligation exists, not 
only irrespective of the idea of happiness or of advan- 
tage to be derived from the given act, but often in 
opposition to it ; the desire of happiness or of personal 
advantage drawing us in one direction, the sense of 
obligation in another. It is not true that duty and 
interest are identical. We have different names for 
them, we mean different tilings by fhern. We are con- 
scious of acting, now from one, now from the other, 
of these principles. It is not true that men never 
intentionally do what they know to be wrong. This 
was the capital defect in the ethical system of Socrates, 
and also of Plato, who make virtue a matter of science, 
and sin to be merely ignorance. Whose consciousness 
does not testify the opposite of this ? Who will not say 
with Ovid : 

" Video meliora, proboque, deteriora sequor " ; 

or with Euripides : I know that what I am about to do 
is evil, but desire is stronger than my deliberations." 
Surely the poets in this case arc more nearly right than 
the philosophers. Who has not reason to say with 
Paul : " That which I do, I allow not." 

Neither is it true that we act always from personal 
and selfish considerations. We are conscious of the 
opposite, conscious of doing that which is right, because 
it is right, and not for the sake of personal advantage. 
Nor in such cases is the verdict of conscience against 
us ; but, on the contrary, it is precisely such actions 
that draw forth the testimony of her warmest appro- 
bation ; so far from reproaching us for not acting with 



144 



STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY. 



more direct and uniform reference to our own advan- 
tage, conscience more frequently condemns us for 
having acted from no higher principle. 

We cannot but regard the facts of consciousness, then, 
as altogether at variance with the theory under con- 
sideration. 

Suppose, now, we give the term utility a still wider 
extension, meaning by it, not the advantage of the indi- 
vidual merely, but the good of the greatest number; 
does it become, in this sense, the foundation of right 
and of moral obligation ? There are still insuperable 
objections. 

In the first place, how can it always be known what 
will promote the interests of the greatest number ? 
The tendencies and results of actions are often hidden 
from human perspicacity. We do not know how they 
will affect the interests of any considerable number 
of persons. A laborious calculation of consequences 
would in most cases be necessary in order to such a 
conclusion, and even then, we could never arrive at 
certainty, never be sure that our reasonings and con- 
clusions were correct. We should be in suspense, 
therefore, as to the morality of actions, unable to decide 
whether they are right or wrong, until we could first 
know their ultimate bearing on the general welfare. 
Such a calculation of consequences is quite beyond the 
capacity of the mass ; only the more enlightened and 
far-seeing are competent to form such judgments, and 
even they, not with any certainty. Only the few, there- 
fore, are competent to form ideas of right or wrong, and 
apply them to human conduct, while the vast multitude 
are left without any such faculty to guide them. 

Furthermore, it may be justly objected to this theory, 



THE MORAL .FACULTY. 



145 



in the form in whkh it is now stated, that it is directly 
at variance with the facts in the case. As a matter of 
fact, we -do not always calculate the consequences of an 
action before we pronounce it, in our minds, right or 
wrong. We are conscious of no such procedure. We 
do not stop to know what bearing it is likely to have 
on the public welfare. We do not raise the question 
at all. We neither know nor care. Instinctively we 
decide as to the propriety and rightness of the given 
act ; we approve and condemn without reference to 
consequences, and on other grounds than that of ex- 
pediency. 

It is fatal to this theory of utility, in whatever form 
it is stated, whether as referring to the happiness of the 
individual or the happiness of the community, to the 
advantage of the individual, or the advantage of all, 
that, so far from being conscious ordinarily of any such 
considerations, in our estimate of the morality of actions, 
we are conscious of quite the opposite. Our moral 
decisions are often pronounced under circumstances 
which preclude the possibility of all such prudential 
considerations. Narrate to a child, just old enough to 
understand you, some story of flagrant injustice and 
wrong ; the flush of indignation, the glow of resentment, 
are visible at once on that cheek ; the decision of that 
moral nature, its verdict of disapproval and condemna- 
tion, is to be read at once in that eye, that brow, that 
clenched hand, the whole mien and aspect of the min- 
iature man. Has it been calculating the expediency 
and utility of the thing, the consequences to society of 
what its outraged nature condemns? 

But there is a further objection to making utility, in 
any of its significations, the ground of moral obligation. 
10 



146 



STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY. 



It is, that all these principles, as thus applied, virtually 
presuppose the existence of moral obligation, and there- 
fore cannot be the ground of it. I perceive, such a 
course to be conducive to happiness ; therefore, says 
the advocate of this view : I am under obligation to 
pursue that course. But why therefore ? Why ought ? 
Suppose I choose to do that which is not on the whole 
for my happiness ; what then ? Whose business is it 
but my own ? Either there is no manner of obligation 
in that case, or else it lies out of and back of the prin- 
ciple now supposed. The same may be said of utility 
in the sense of advantage. It presupposes an obligation 
to do what is seen to be useful and advantageous, and 
the question still remains : what is the ground of that 
obligation which the doctrine of utility presupposes ? 

2. Let us look now at the theory which places the 
foundation of moral obligation on the ground of positive 
enactment. Laws have been made, human and divine, 
requiring, forbidding, etc. Hence our approval and 
condemnation of actions and our conviction of obligation. 
The just and the unjust, the right and the wrong, in 
human conduct, are simply its conformity, or want of 
conformity, to law. 

Of those who take this ground, some look no higher 
than to human enactment as the ground of rectitude 
and the foundation of moral obligation. The laws of 
man make the right and wrong of things, and are the 
sufficient and ultimate standard of morals. There is 
no higher law. No other reason need be given, why I 
should do or not do a given thing, than that the laws of 
my country require it. 

Such among the ancients was the doctrine of Epicurus 
and of the Sophists. Plato, in the " De Legibus," and 



THE MORAL FACULTY. 



147 



Aristotle, in his " Ethics," make mention of the doctrine 
as maintained by some in their day. 

Among the moderns, Gassendi and Hobbes are almost 
the only writers of distinction who have had the bold- 
ness to avow, and the consistency to maintain, a doctrine 
at once so shameless, so obnoxious to the common sense 
and common honesty of mankind, and so destructive of 
the first principles of morality. Occasionally, indeed, 
the spectacle is presented of some one, more patriotic 
than discreet, who in his zeal to defend the constitution 
and laws of his country, so far forgets himself, in the 
pressure of the exigency, as to take the general position 
that the laws of the land are, to us, the final court of 
appeal, and that we are to look no higher for authority. 
Even such persons, it is to be presumed, are not fully 
aware of the true nature and legitimate consequences 
of this doctrine, nor of the company they keep in main- 
taining such a position. They would shrink, it is to be 
hoped, from the doctrine, reduced to its simple elements, 
and affirmed as a principle in ethics, that might makes 
right, a sentiment that even a German rationalist has 
pronounced infernal; and from the atheism that discards 
the Deity, and overlooks the moral nature of man, while 
proclaiming human law as the standard of morals and 
the foundation of right. 

If it were of any use to reason against a doctrine so 
little deserving the name of philosophy or the notice of 
a calm reply it were sufficient, perhaps, to ask how it 
is possible on this principle, since law is itself the source 
and foundation of right, to compare one law or code 
with another: those of Draco, e.g. with those of Solon 
or Lycurgus ; the edicts of Nero with those of Constan- 
tine ; and because one system is mild and humane, 



148 



STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY. 



another barbarous and inhuman, pronounce one to be 
more right and just than the other. If law is its own 
authority, if it makes right, if back of it there is no 
appeal, no ultimate standard of rectitude, then, of course, 
everything which is once enacted, and obtains the sanc- 
tion of established law, is right and binding, no matter 
what it may be — one equally so with another, — and it 
is absurd to make a distinction between them. The 
commands of the veriest despot are as just and right, as 
obligatory on the conscience, as those of the wisest and 
mildest ruler. Law is law ; and that ends the matter. 
A law morally wrong is an impossibility, an absurdity. 
Inasmuch as laws vary, moreover, in different lands, 
what is right in one country is wrong when you cross 
a river or a mountain ; what is a virtue in Holland, is 
a sin in Belgium. 

Much more reasonable and philosophical is the view 
of those who regard the divine will and law as the 
foundation of moral rectitude. This view was main- 
tained by Occam among the scholastics, by Paley and 
many others among the moderns. Yet, even to this 
view, insuperable objections arise : 

1. If this view be correct then we have only to sup- 
pose the will of Deity to change, and what is now wrong 
becomes instantly right : the good and the bad, the 
virtuous and the vicious, change characters at once. 
We have only to suppose him other than he is, and to 
have commanded other than he has, to haye reversed 
the decalogue, and the things now commanded would 
then have been wrong, and the things now forbidden 
would have been right. Murder, adultery, false witness, 
theft, covetousness, would have been virtues, commend- 
able and obligatory ; while to honor our parents, and 



THE MORAL FACULTY. 



149 



to love our neighbor as ourselves, would have been 
morally wrong. In other words, there is no difference 
in respect of moral character between these actions in 
themselves considered ; the difference lies wholly in the 
fact that one is commanded and the other forbidden ; 
they are right or wrong, only as they are, or are not, 
the will of Deity. 

It is no answer to this, to say that God is holy, and 
therefore will not command that which is evil ; nor, 
that he is immutable, and therefore will not change ; 
the question is not as to the matter of fact, but as to 
what icould be true in case he and his law were not 
what they are. If it were possible for God to throw 
around sin the sanction of his law, would it, because of 
that sanction, cease to be sin and become holiness ? Does 
the Tightness of an act consist wholly and simply in its 
being lawful ? 

2. It follows also, that, had there been no divine law 
to establish the character of actions, human conduct 
had been neither virtuous nor vicious, neither good nor 
bad, but all actions would have been alike indifferent : 
to hate our neighbor, to take his property, his good 
name, or his life, would have been not only allowable, 
but equally as commendable and meritorious as the 
opposite. Nothing would have been unjust, nothing 
wrong. 

3. There is no propriety or sense in speaking of 
God's law as just and good, in affirming that his statutes 
are right, his commandments holy, etc. ; for moral ap- 
probation is wholly misplaced and uncalled for. It is 
without meaning. For, if there is no standard of right 
and no ground of obligation but the law itself, how can 
its requirements be any other than right and binding, 



150 



STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY. 



whatever they may be ? To say that his statutes are 
just and right, is to say, simply, that his statutes are 
his statutes. More than this ; when we speak of the 
law as holy, just, etc., do we not attribute a moral 
character to the law itself? But how can this be ? If 
the law creates moral distinctions, how can law itself 
possess a moral character ; how can it be either right 
or wrong ? This is to suppose right to exist before it 
was created. 

4. Further : for the same reason we are shut out, on 
this principle, from attributing to Deity himself any 
moral character. Law is the foundation of right, and 
law is from God. Back of his will there is no law, and, 
of course, no ground of rectitude. God has himself, 
therefore, aside from his own law, no moral character, 
no virtue ; for, beyond his own will and pleasure, there 
is no law imposing obligation, and constituting for him 
the right and the wrong. One thing is as right as 
another for him; everything is equally right; and, 
strictly speaking, nothing is for him either right or 
wrong. It is language without meaning when we say, 
with one of old : " Holy, holy, holy, Lord God ; just and 
true are all thy ways." Before he enacted the first law 
there was no such thing as right. It depended entirely 
on his pleasure whether to enact that law. There was 
no obligation to enact it, for no law as yet existed to 
create obligation. Suppose he had not done it. Right 
would not have existed ; and of course, in that case, 
could not have pertained to the Divine character. Not 
until lie creates the right, by making law, can he, by 
any possibility, possess a moral character ; and even 
then it is a moral character which he himself creates, 
and imposes upon himself by arbitrary enactment. 



THE MOPiAL FACULTY. 



151 



Had he made a law precisely the reverse of the actual 
one, it would have been equally right and binding, and 
himself equally holy. But it is difficult to see how the 
thing made can put the maker himself under obligation ; 
how, from his own work, he can derive the foundation 
of a character which he had not in himself prior to 
the work. It is difficult to estimate the intrinsic excel- 
lence of that holiness which owes its origin to a purely 
arbitrary enactment ; which might just as well never 
have been made, or have been entirely other than, and 
the reverse of, what it is ; a holiness which, when strictly 
viewed, amounts merely to this — that the being who 
possesses it does what he does. 

It may be supposed, perhaps, by some that the divine 
law, while it may not absolutely create the distinction 
of right and wrong, does nevertheless create the obliga- 
tion on our part to do, or not to do, the things required ; 
that it is to me the sufficient reason why I ought to do 
thus and thus. This is a view entitled to a careful 
consideration. I must do thus, because such is the will 
of Deity. The question is now as to this word because. 
Granting that the will of Deity is as affirmed, what has 
that to do with my conduct ; wherein and how does 
that place me under obligation to do what the Deity 
wills ? Where lies the binding power of the law itself? 
Manifestly not in itself as law, but in something else. 
There must be something to make the law binding, or 
it can bring with it no obligation to obedience on my 
part. And in saying this, we really abandon the position 
that law is, itself, the basis of obligation. 

This something we may find in one of three things : 
It may be in the character of the law given ; a holy, 
just, and good law, and one which we ought therefore 



152 



STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY. 



to obey. But this is to place the ground of obligation, 
not in the law itself, but in something else, viz. moral 
rectitude. I am bound to obey, not because there is a 
law, but because there is a holy and just law. 

Or we may refer the binding power of the law to the 
relation which the Deity sustains to us. He is our 
creator, preserver, benefactor, and as such has the right, 
it is said, to control and govern us. But does this, we 
reply, give him the right to govern and control irrespec- 
tive of moral distinctions ? If it does, then right and 
wrong are the mere arbitrary creations of his will ; a 
view which we have already considered, and rejected. 
If it does not, then the ultimate ground of obligation is 
to be found in the rectitude of the divine requirements. 
In either case, it is not the law itself that constitutes 
the obligation. 

Does, then, that which constitutes the binding force 
of the divine law consist in this : that the Deity is in 
himself such a being as he is, the greatest, the wisest, 
the best ; and therefore his will is obligatory on other 
beings ? This again is to recognize moral distinctions 
as lying back of the law itself, and as giving to that 
law its character and its force. When you say that 
God is good, just, holy, the best of beings, and on that 
account ought to be obeyed, you abandon the position 
that law itself creates moral distinctions, and that it 
contains in itself the ground of obligation. His being 
and nature are prior to his law, and the foundation of 
it ; and if his being and nature are themselves good, 
then certainly it is not his law that makes them so ; and 
if it is from them that our obligation to obedience springs 
then certainly not from the law itself. 

Whatever view we take, then, of this matter, we are 



THE MORAL FACULTY. 



153 



compelled to give up the position that the divine law is 
the ground of moral obligation. An action is right, not 
because God wills it ; on the contrary, he wills it because 
it is right. 

The distinction between the Tightness and the law- 
fulness of an act is admitted by some who still place 
obligation on the ground of law. Tins is the case with 
Chalmers. In general it may be remarked, that no 
writer breathes, throughout, a higher moral tone and 
purpose, or utters truth with more eloquence and ear- 
nestness than he. His style is an avalanche broken loose, 
a sea of expression, rolling sentence after sentence, wave 
upon wave, with a loftiness and force quite irresistible. 
It is the style of the orator, however, rather than of the 
philosopher, indicating fervor and strength of feeling, 
rather than precision and clearness of thought. There 
is a certain nobleness of sentiment that wins our admi- 
ration. We feel sure that some leviathan is ploughing 
up those waters, and making them to boil ; but it is a 
leviathan not willing to be caught and classified for 
purposes of science. In the present case, Dr. Chalmers, 
if we understand him, derives obligation from the divine 
law, but right from the divine character ; thus separat- 
ing the two. While he rejects the view of Paley, that 
makes the divine command the foundation of right, he 
still makes that command the foundation of our obliga- 
tion to do the right. Not until Deity interposes with 
his authority in its behalf, does the right become 
obligatory. 

It is difficult to perceive the justice of this distinction. 
In the first place, it limits the term obligation to a strictly 
forensic use, a sense to which it is by no means re- 
stricted. A wider sense belongs to it. We are under 



154 



STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY. 



obligation, ethically speaking, to do many things not 
specifically required by law. Bat more than this, it 
seems to divorce obligation from right, as if right did 
not carry in itself a corresponding obligation, but was 
dependent on law to come in and give it authority ; or 
as if, on the other hand, obligation might sometimes, 
or might at least be supposed to, run counter to right. 

We cannot think such a distinction either necessary 
or allowable. On the contrary, we regard right and 
obligation as co-extensive, and on a common basis. 
The foundation and origin of the one is also the source 
and foundation of the other. Given : the right, and 
there is given along with it the obligation to do the 
right. We cannot conceive them separate ; the former 
without the latter ; a right thing which we are under 
no obligation to do, or a wrong thing which we are 
under no obligation to avoid. This obligation is uni- 
versal, absolute, complete. Law cannot add to it, or 
make it more perfect than it already is. Law may 
indicate and enforce, but cannot create, moral obliga- 
tion. Show me that a thing is right, and you show me 
a reason, and the best of all reasons, why I ought to do 
it. The moment I perceive the Tightness, I perceive 
also the obligation. If the one is founded in law, so 
is the other ; if the divine character is the foundation 
of the one, it is the ground of the other also. 

It is admitted that in respect to matters in themselves 
indifferent, as for instance the ceremonies of a ritual 
observance, law may impose an obligation not previously 
existing. But such is not the case now under consid- 
eration. We are concerned in this discussion, only 
with such matters as come under the cognizance of the 
moral faculty, as being in themselves right or wrong ; 



THE MORAL FACULTY. 



155 



and the question is : What constitutes the obligation to 
do, not a thing indifferent, but a thing which we per- 
ceive and know to be right ? Our answer is : the very 
rightness constitutes the obligation. The question re- 
turns then : on what does the rightness depend ? Not 
on utility, not on law. An action is right, not because 
expedient, but expedient because right. It is right, 
not became God wills it ; on the contrary, he icills it 
because it is rigid. What then constitutes rightness ? 

3. It may be said that right and wrong lie not in any 
of these things ; not in the pursuit of happiness or of 
personal advantage ; not in law, human or Divine ; but 
in the nature and character of God himself. This, as we 
have already stated, is the view of Chalmers. It is the 
view, also, of many others. We have discussed so fully 
the previous theories that there is no need of dwelling 
long upon this. The same objections that lie against 
the theory of divine law, as the source of obligation 
and the ground of right, apply with equal force to this 
view. God's law is but the expression of his will ; and 
his will is but the expression and transcript of his 
character. It is his nature in action. To say that his 
law constitutes right, then, is virtually saying, in another 
form, that his nature and character are the ground of 
right ; and whatever objections lie against the one view 
are, in reality, equally objections to the other. 

If right or wrong depend, ultimately, on the character 
of God, then we have only to suppose God to change, 
or to have been originally other than he is, and our 
duties and obligations change at once : that which was a 
virtue becomes a crime ; that which is a crime is trans- 
formed into a virtue. Had he been precisely the 
reverse of what he is, he had still been, as now, the 



156 



STUDIES IX PHILOSOPHY. 



source of right, and his own character would have been 
as truly good and just and right as it is now. This is, 
virtually, to rob him of all moral character. We may 
still say that he is holy, and that his ways are right ; 
but we mean by it only this, when we come to explain : 
that he is what he is, and does what he does. The 
holiness of his acts consists, not at all in the essential 
character of the acts themselves, but only in the circum- 
stance that they are his acts. 

It does not meet this objection to say that God is 
holy — holy by a necessity of his nature, and that he can 
never be otherwise ; that is not the question ; but 
simply, whether his being what he is, is the ground of 
all rectitude and of all obligation ; whether that which 
he does is right because it cor/forms to his character, or 
whether his character is holy because it conforms to the 
right. This is a very important distinction. 

We have this objection, then, to the view which 
resolves virtue into the Divine character, and makes 
right inherent originally in the Divine nature ; that 
while it seeks to honor God by making him the source 
of all excellence, it really takes away from his character 
the highest excellence and glory that can pertain to it, 
that of conforming to the right. 1 

4. We seem to be driven, then, to the only remaining 
conclusion, that right and wrong are distinctions immu- 
table, and inherent in the nature of things. They are 
not the creations of expediency nor of law ; nor yet do 
they originate in the Divine character. They have no 
origin : they are eternal as the throne of Deity ; they 
are immutable as God himself. Nay, were God himself 
to change, these distinctions would change not. Om- 

1 See note (A.) at the end of this Article. 



THE MORAL FACULTY. 



157 



nipoteuce has no power over them, whether to create or 
to destroy. Law does not make them, but they make law. 
They are the source and spring of all law and all obli- 
gation. Reason points out these distinctions ; the moral 
nature recognizes and approves them. God's law and 
will and nature are in conformity to these distinctions ; 
else that law were not just and right, nor that nature 
holy. Our moral nature is in conformity to these dis- 
tinctions ; hence, we approve and disapprove, as we do, 
the various actions of men. The deeds are right, not 
because we approve them ; on the contrary, we approve 
them because they are rigid. They are right, not 
because they are commanded , but they are commanded 
because they are right. 

There is a sense in which Deity himself is subject to 
this eternal and immutable law of right. There are 
things which it would not be right for even Deity to do. 
So fully does his moral nature approve the right and 
abhor the wrong, that the Scriptures declare it impos- 
sible for him to do evil. There is no purity like his; 
no approval of the right, no condemnation and abhor- 
rence of the wrong, so strong and intense as his in the 
whole universe. This his moral nature is to him a law, 
the highest possible and conceivable, placing him under 
obligation, not indeed to another, but to himself, to 
adhere ever to the eternal principles of right and truth 
and justice. 

In their anxiety to honor and exalt the Divine Being, 
some have shrunk from the idea that there is any law 
or obligation resting on the Deity to do one thing 
rather than another ; that there is, or can be, anything 
which it would be wrong for him to do. But which 
most honors and exalts God, to resolve the distinction 



158 



STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY. 



of right and wrong into the arbitrary decisions of his 
will, thus leaving him without moral character, or to 
regard that distinction as immutable and eternal, exten- 
ding even to the throne and will of him who layeth the 
beams of his chambers in the waters, and hangeth the 
earth upon nothing ? Which most honors him, to make 
his nature and his will the foundation of right, or the 
eternal principles of right and justice the foundation of 
his character and his law ? Which gives the noblest 
and most exalted conception of the Divine Being? 
Which of these two views imparts the loftier signifi- 
cance to that sublime anthem of the angels that goes up 
unceasingly before his throne, and shall yet go up from 
the entire universe : " Holy, holy, holy Lord God 
Almighty, which was, and is, and is to come ; " and to 
that song of the redeemed that stand upon the sea of 
glass : " Just and true are thy ways, thou king of saints. 
Who shall not fear thee, Lord, and glorify thy name ? " 

It may be said, perhaps, that to make right and wrong 
inherent in the nature of things is virtually to place 
their foundation and origin in God, since the nature of 
things depends, after all, on him. He who made all 
things is the author of their nature also. 

This objection derives its force from the somewhat 
indefinite expression, " nature of things" a phrase used 
with great latitude of meaning. As used to denote 
material objects and their qualities, it is true that both 
things, and the nature of things, are the work of God. 
As used to denote finite intelligences, the same is true ; 
they are the work of the Divine Intelligence, they and 
their original nature. But when we speak of things, 
and the nature of things, as applicable to this discussion 
we do not, of course, refer to material objects, nor yet 



THE MORAL FACULTY. 



159 



to spiritual intelligences, but to the actions and moral 
conduct of intelligent beings, created or uncreated, 
finite or infinite. We mean to say, that such and such 
acts of an intelligent voluntary agent, whoever he may 
be, are, in themselves, in their very nature, right or 
wrong. Xow God does not create the actions of intelli- 
gent free agents, and, of course, does not create the 
nature of those actions. To say that the moral charac- 
ter of an act is created by Deity, is simply to beg the 
question in dispute. 

When we say that right and wrong are inherent, then, 
in the very nature of things, we simply assert that 
certain courses of conduct are, in themselves, in their 
very nature and essence, wrong, certain others, right ; 
that they are so, quite independent and irrespective of 
the consequences that result from them, or of the sanc- 
tions and authority with which they may be invested ; 
that they are so, not because of the laws, either human 
or Divine, that give them force ; that they would be so 
were there no law, or were it the opposite of what it is ; 
that even the actions of Deity himself fall within the 
range of this universal principle; and that it does not 
depend on his will or even his nature, much less on his 
power as creator, to establish or abolish this immutable 
distinction. 

We say it is in the very nature of things that the 
whole is greater than a part ; that a straight line is the 
shortest distance between two points ; that two straight 
lines cannot enclose a space. We cannot conceive the 
opposite to be true. It does not depend on the will of 
Deity whether these things shall be so or not. He does 
not create these relations. They are eternal and neces- 
sary truths. In like manner there are certain truths 



160 



STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY. 



pertaining to the conduct of all rational and intelligent 
beings, certain moral distinctions, which we regard as 
immutable and eternal, inherent in the very nature of 
things. And on this firm, eternal basis rests the foun- 
dation of our moral obligation. 1 

We have discussed, as yet, but two of the elements, 
or mental processes, into which our analysis resolved 
an act of conscience. It remains to notice briefly the 
third. 

III. The "perception of merit and demerit, icith the 
consequent approbation or censure of the agent. 

No sooner do we perceive an action to be right or 
wrong, and to involve, therefore, an obligation on the 
part of the doer, than there arises also in the mind the 
idea of merit or demerit in connection with the doing ; 
we regard the agent as deserving of praise or blame, and 
in our own minds do approve or condemn him and his 
course accordingly. This approval or censure of our- 
selves and others, according to the apprehended desert 
of the act and the actor, constitutes a process of trial, 
an inner tribunal, at whose bar are constantly arraigned 
the various deeds of men, especially our own, and whose 
verdict it is no easy matter to set aside. 

It is in point here to consider how far these decisions 
are correct and reliable ; what authority they have for 
the control of the conduct; and what is their actual 
influence over us. 

The question arises as to the correctness and reli- 
ableness of the decisions of the moral faculty. This 
question, though pertaining directly to the final verdict 
of approval or condemnation, relates also to the previous 
perceptions on which that verdict is based, and so 

1 See note (B.) at the end of this Article. 



THE MORAL FACULTY. 



161 



covers, in fact, the entire ground of the operations of 
this faculty. The final verdict will be correct or not, 
according as the previous judgments are so. If con- 
science correctly discerns the right and the wrong, and 
the consequent obligation, she will be likely to judge 
correctly as to the deserts of the doer. If she mistake 
these points she may approve what is not worthy of 
approval, and condemn what is good. 

How are we to know, then, whether conscience judges 
right ? What voucher have we for her correctness ? 
How far is she to be trusted in her perceptions and 
decisions ? Perhaps we are so constituted, it may be 
said, as invariably to judge that to be right which is 
wrong, and the reverse, and so to approve where we 
should condemn. True, we reply, this may be so. It 
may be that I am so constituted that two and two shall 
seem to be four, when in reality they are five ; and that 
the three angles of a triangle shall seem to be equal to 
two right angles, when in reality they are equal to 
three. This may be so. Still it is a presumption in 
favor of the correctness of all our natural perceptions, 
that they are the operation of original principles of our 
constitution. It is not probable, to say the least, that 
we are so constituted by the great author of our being 
as to be habitually deceived. It may be that the organs 
of vision and hearing are absolutely false ; that the 
tilings which we see, and hear, and feel, through the 
medium of the senses, have no correspondence to our 
supposed perceptions. But this is not a probable sup- 
position. He who denies the validity of the natural 
faculties, has the burden of proof; and proof is, of 
course, impossible, for the simple reason that, in order 
to prove them false, you must make use of these very 
11 



162 



STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY. 



faculties ; and if their testimony is not reliable in the 
one case, certainly it is not in the other. We must 
then take their veracity for granted ; and we have the 
right to do so. And so of our moral nature. It comes 
from the Author of our being, and if it is uniformly and 
originally wrong, then he is wrong. It is an error 
which, in the nature of the case, can never be detected 
or corrected. We cannot get beyond our constitution, 
back of our natural endowments, to judge, a priori, 
and from an external position, whether they are correct 
or not. Right and wrong are not, indeed, the creations 
of the Divine will ; but the faculties by which we per- 
ceive and approve the right and condemn the wrong are 
from him ; and we must presume upon their general 
correctness. 

It does not follow from this, however, nor do we 
affirm, that conscience is infallible, that she never errs. 
It does not follow that our moral perceptions and judg- 
ments are invariably correct because they spring from 
our native constitution. This is not so. There is not 
one of the faculties of the human mind that is not liable 
to err. Not one of its activities is infallible. The 
reasoning power sometimes errs ; the judgment errs ; 
the memory errs. The moral faculty is on the same 
footing, in this respect, with any and all other faculties. 

But of what use, it will be said, is a moral faculty on 
which, after all, we cannot rely ? Of what use, we 
reply, is any mental faculty that is not absolutely and 
universally correct ? Of what use is a memory or a 
judgment that sometimes errs ? We do not wholly dis- 
trust these faculties, or cast them aside as worthless. 
A time-keeper may be of great value, though not abso- 
lutely perfect. Its authorship and original construction 



THE MORAL FACULTY. 



163 



may be a strong presumption in favor of its general 
correctness ; nevertheless, its hands may have been 
accidentally set to the wrong hour of the day. 

This is a spectacle that not unfrequently presents 
itself in the moral world — a man with his conscience 
pointing to the wrong hour ; a strictly conscientious man, 
fully and firmly persuaded that he is right, yet by no 
means agreeing with the general convictions of man- 
kind ; an hour or two before, or it may be, as much 
behind the age. Such men are the hardest of all mor- 
tals to be set right, for the simple reason that they are 
conscientious. " Here is my watch ; it points to such 
an hour ; and my watch is from the very best maker. 
I cannot be mistaken." And yet he is mistaken, and 
egregiously so. The truth is, conscience is no more 
infallible than any other mental faculty. It is simply, 
as we have seen, a power of perceiving and judging, 
and its operations, like all other perceptions and judg- 
ments, are liable to error. 

And this which we have just said goes far to account 
for the great diversity that has long been known to exist 
in the moral judgments and opinions of men. It has 
often been urged, and with great force, against the 
supposed existence of a moral faculty in man, as a part 
of his original nature, that men think and act so differ- 
ently with respect to these matters. Nature, it is said, 
ought to act uniformly ; thus eyes and ears do not give 
essentially conflicting testimony, at different times, and 
in different countries, with respect to the same objects. 
Certain colors are universally pleasing, and certain 
sounds disagreeable. But not so, it is said, with respect 
to the moral judgments of men. What one approves, 
another condemns. If these distinctions are universal, 



164 



STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY. 



absolute, essential ; and if the power of perceiving them 
is inherent in our nature, men ought to agree in their 
perception of them. Yet you will find nothing approved 
by one age and people which is not condemned by 
some other ; nay, the very crimes of one age and 
nation are the religious acts of another. If the per- 
ception of right and wrong is intuitive, how happens 
this diversity ? 

To which we reply, the thing has been already 
accounted for. Our ideas of right and wrong, it was 
stated in discussing their origin, depend on circum- 
stances for their time and degree of development. They 
are not irrespective of opportunity. Education, habits, 
laws, customs, while they do not originate, still have 
much to do with the development and modification of 
these ideas. They may be by these influences aided or 
retarded in their growth, or even quite misdirected, 
just as a tree may by unfavorable influences be hindered 
and thwarted in its growth, be made to turn and twist, 
and put forth abnormal and monstrous developments. 
Yet nature works there, nevertheless, and, in spite of 
all such obstacles and unfavorable circumstances, seeks 
to put forth, according to her laws, her perfect and 
finished work. All that we contend is, that nature 
under favorable circumstances develops in the human 
mind the idea of moral distinctions, while, at the same 
time, men may differ much in their estimate of what is 
right and what is wrong, according to the circumstances 
and influences surrounding them. To apply the dis- 
tinction of right and wrong to particular cases, and 
decide as to the morality of given actions, is an office 
of judgment, and the judgment ma£y err in this, as in 
any other of its operations. It may be biassed by 



THE MORAL FACULTY. 



165 



unfavorable influences, by wrong education, wrong 
habits, and the like. 

The same is true, substantially, of all our natural 
faculties and their operations. They depend on circum- 
stances for the degree of their development and the 
mode of their action. Hence they are liable to great 
diversity and frequent error. Perception misleads us 
as to sensible objects not seldom ; even in their mathe- 
matical reasonings men do not always agree. There is 
the greatest possible diversity among men as to the 
retentiveness of the memory, and as to the extent and 
power of the reasoning faculties. The savage, that 
thinks it no wrong to scalp his enemy, or even to roast 
and eat him, is utterly unable to count twenty upon his 
fingers ; while the philosopher, who recognizes the duty 
of loving his neighbor as himself, calculates with pre- 
cision the motions of the heavenly bodies, and predicts 
their place in the heavens for ages to come. Shall we 
conclude, because of this diversity, that these several 
faculties are not parts of our nature ? 

We are by no means disposed to admit, however, that 
the diversity in men's moral judgments is so great as 
might at first appear. There is, on the contrary, a 
general uniformity. As to the great essential princi- 
ples of morals, men, after all, do judge much alike in 
different ages and different countries. In details they 
differ ; in general principles they agree. In the appli- 
cation of the rules of morality to particular actions they 
differ widely, according to circumstances ; in the recog- 
nition of the right and the wrong as distinctive principles, 
and of obligation to do the right as known, and avoid 
the wrong as known, in this they agree. It must be 
remembered, moreover, that men do not always act 



166 



STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY. 



according to their own ideas of right. From the general 
neglect of virtue, in any age or community, and the 
prevalence of great and revolting crimes, we cannot 
safely infer the absence, or even the perversion, of the 
moral faculty. 

It is important to bear in mind, throughout this dis- 
cussion, the distinction between the idea of right, in 
itself considered, and the perception of a given act as 
right; the one a simple conception, the other an act of 
judgment ; the one an idea derived from the very con- 
stitution of the mind, connate if not innate, the other 
an application of that idea by the understanding to par- 
ticular instances of conduct. The former, the idea of 
moral distinctions, may be universal, necessary, absolute^ 
unerring ; the latter, the application of the idea to par- 
ticular instances, and the decision that such and such 
acts are or are not right, may be altogether an incorrect 
and mistaken judgment. Now, it is precisely at this 
point that the diversity in the moral judgments of man- 
kind makes its appearance. In recognizing the distinc- 
tion of right and wrong, they agree ; in the application 
of the same to particular instances, in deciding what is 
right and what is wrong — a simple act of the judgment, 
an exercise of the understanding, as we have said — in 
this it is that they differ. And the difference is no 
greater, and no more inexplicable, with respect to this, 
than in any other class of judgments. 

We have admitted that conscience is not infallible. 
Is it then a safe guide ? Are we in all cases to follow 
its decisions ? Since liable to err, it cannot be in itself, 
we reply, in all cases, a safe guide. We cannot con- 
clude with certainty that a given course is right simply 
because conscience approves it. This does not of 



THE MORAL FACULTY. 



167 



necessity follow. The decision that a given act is right, 
or not, is simply a matter of judgment ; and the judg- 
ment may or may not be correct. That depends on 
circumstances, on education partly, on the light we 
have, be it more or less. Conscientious men are not 
always in the right. We may do wrong conscientiously. 
Saul of Tarsus was a conscientious persecutor, and verily 
thought he was doing God service. No doubt many 
of the most intolerant and relentless bigots have been 
equally conscientious, and equally mistaken. Such 
men are all the more dangerous because doing what 
they believe to be right. 

What, then, are we to do ? Shall we follow a guide 
thus liable to err ? Yes, we reply, follow conscience ; 
but see that it be a right and well-informed conscience, 
forming its judgments not from impulse, passion, preju- 
dice, the bias of habit or of unreflecting custom, but 
from the clearest light of reason, and especially of the 
divine word. We are responsible for the judgments 
we form in morals as much as for any class of our 
judgments ; responsible, in other words, for the sort of 
conscience we have. Saul's mistake lay, not in acting 
according to his conscientious convictions of duty, but 
in not having a more enlightened conscience. He 
should have formed a more careful judgment, have 
inquired more diligently after the right way. To say, 
however, that a man ought not to do what conscience 
approves, is to say that he ought not to do what he 
sincerely believes to be right. This would be a very 
strange rule in morals. 

Another point to be noticed, before we leave the sub- 
ject, is the power of conscience, the influence which its 
verdicts of approval or condemnation exert over the 



168 



STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY. 



human mind. Very great is this power, as evinced in 
operation. We all know something of it, not only by 
the observation of others, but by the consciousness of 
our own inner life. In the testimony of a good con- 
science, in its calm, deliberate approval of our conduct, 
lies one of the sweetest and purest of the pleasures of 
life ; a source of enjoyment whose springs are beyond 
the reach of accident or envy ; a fountain in the desert, 
making glad the wilderness and the solitary place. It 
has, moreover, a sustaining power. The consciousness 
of rectitude, the approval of the still small voice within, 
that whispers, in the moment of danger and of weak- 
ness, " You are right" imparts to the fainting soul a 
courage and a strength that can come from no other 
source. Under its influence the soul is elevated above 
the violence of pain and the pressure of outward calamity. 
The timid become bold, the weak are made strong. Here 
lies the secret of much of the heroism that adorns the 
annals of martyrdom and of the church. Women and 
children, frail and feeble by nature, ill-fitted to with- 
stand the force of public opinion, and shrinking from 
the very thought of pain and suffering, have calmly 
faced the angry reproaches of the multitude, and reso- 
lutely met death in its most terrific forms, sustained 
by the power of an approving conscience, whose de- 
cisions were to them of more consequence than the 
applause or censure of the world, and whose sustaining 
power bore them, as on a prophet's chariot of fire, 
above the pains of torture and the rage of infuriated 
men. 

Not less is the power of an accusing conscience. Its 
disapprobation and censure, though clothed with no 
external authority, are more to be dreaded than the 



THE MORAL FACULTY. 



169 



frowns of kings or the approach of armies. It is a 
silent, constant presence, that cannot be escaped and 
will not be pacified. It embitters the happiness of life, 
cuts the sinews of the soul's inherent strength. It is a 
fire in the bones, burning when no man suspects but 
he only who is doomed to its endurance ; a girdle of 
thorns worn next the heart, concealed, it may be, from 
the eye of man, but giving the wearer no rest day nor 
night. Its accusations are not loud ; but to the guilty 
soul they are terrible, penetrating her inmost recesses 
and making her to tremble as the forest trembles at 
the roar of the enraged lion, as the deep sea trembles 
in her silent depths w^hen her Creator goeth by on the 
wings of the tempest and the God of glory thundereth. 
The bold, bad man hears that accusing voice, and his 
strength departs from him. The heart that is inured 
to all evil, and grown hard in sin, and fears not the 
face of man nor the law of God, hears it, and becomes 
as the heart of a child. 

How terrible is remorse ! that worm that never dies, 
that fire that never goes out. We cannot follow the 
human soul beyond the confines of its present existence. 
But it is an opinion entertained by some, and in itself 
not improbable, that in the future conscience will act 
with greatly increased power. When the causes that 
now conspire to prevent its full development and perfect 
action shall operate no longer; when the tumult of the 
march and the battle are over ; when the cares, the 
pleasures, the temptations, the vain pursuits that now 
distract the mind with their confused uproar shall 
die away in the distance and cease to be heard ; in the 
stillness of eternity, in the silence of a purely spiritual 
existence, the still small voice of conscience may per- 



170 



STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY. 



haps be heard as never before. In the busy daytime 
we catch at intervals the sound of the distant ocean as 
a low and gentle murmur. In the still night, when 
all is hushed, we hear it beating in heavy and constant 
surges on the shore. And thus it may be with the 
power of conscience in the future. 



THE MORAL FACULTY. 



171 



NOTES. 



Note A. —Page 156. 

No doubt the divine character embodies the highest conception 
we can form of moral excellence, and that is most nearly perfect 
which most nearly conforms to that character. But why is it so ? 
Is it not because that character is itself conformed to the right ? 
Were it otherwise, and the supposition is allowable, were that char- 
acter malevolent instead of benevolent, would that malevolent 
nature then be the standard of right ? Would selfishness and hate 
be virtue, and love and compassion be vice ? Manifestly not. 
Manifestly it is only because the divine nature is what it is, that it 
stands forth to our conception as the practical embodiment of right. 
But this is not making the divine nature or character the ground of 
right ; on the contrary, it is supposing a standard to which the divine 
character itself conforms. This we do whenever we ascribe moral 
character to God — when we say that he is holy, that he is just, that 
he is good. It is not the divine nature, but the idea of right, that is 
ultimate in our conceptions when we thus speak. 

Dr. Hopkins, in his moral science, resolves all moral distinctions 
into the character of God, distinguishing between character and 
nature, and objecting to the term " nature of Deity " as implying a sort 
of necessity inconsistent with freedom. By the character of God 
he means, if I understand him, the moral choices and preferences, in 
other words the will of Deity, in distinction from anything lying back 
of and leading to those volitions. " It may be that what we must 
reach in our ultimate analysis," he says, " is a free personality, a 
person with no nature, or fate, or fitnesses of things back of him, or 
above him," etc. " So in our search backward for the origin of 
moral distinctions, we shall find not any nature of things, not any 
nature of God, not any necessary and eternal principles, but simply 
the character of God" (Moral Science, pp. 239, 240). 

But does God in choosing thus act arbitrarily and without a rea- 
son ? When he thus, as a free person, prefers virtue to vice, benevo- 



172 



STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY. 



lence to selfishness, is there no reason in the nature of the case, no 
intrinsic difference in the nature of these principles themselves, why 
he thus chooses ? Might he just as well have chosen the opposite ? 
or is there a difference between benevolence and selfishness in their 
very nature, and does God choose in view of that difference ? If 
the latter, then the ultimate ground of moral distinctions lies not in 
the divine character, but in the essential nature and differences of 
things. 

Note B. — Page 160. 

As the doctrine which places the foundation of moral obligation 
in the very nature of things has been regarded by some as of recent 
origin, it may be well to glance at the history of opinions on this 
whole matter. And first as to the opposite theory. 

The opinion that moral distinctions are purely factitious, having 
their foundation not in nature, but in the customs of society or the 
edicts of legislation, human or divine, is by no means without author- 
ity, nor is it of modern origin. Plato, in the tenth book of the De 
Legibus, speaks of those who maintained that nothing was naturally 
just, ra 6Y/aaia ovS* eu/ai <£lV«, but whatever is decreed that for the 
time is right and binding, made so by art and law, but not by any 
nature of its own, aAA.* ov Srj tlvl (frvcrci. In the Theaetetus also he 
speaks of the opinion as held not by the disciples of Protagoras 
alone, but by many other philosophers, and that very confidently ; 
that things just and unjust have not in the nature of them any being 
or essence of their own, but derive their authority from the general 
consent. 

Aristotle also, in his Ethics, notices the same opinion, and ascribes 
it to the fact that the things prescribed by law as right and just are 
so variable and uncertain, whereas that which is natural is immu- 
. table (Lib. i. cap 1, and also Lib. v. cap. 10). 

' Plato mentions by name several philosophers as particularly noted 
for this opinion ; Diogenes Laertius mentions others. Archelaus the 
teacher of Socrates is of this number, holding that to Suaaiov eivai 
kclI to alcrKpov ov <£vcrci dAAa vo/aid, the just and the dishonorable 
are so not by nature, but by law. Aristippus, the contemporary of 
Plato, is represented as holding the same view, that nothing is 
by nature good or evil, but only by law and custom. Anaxarchus, 
according to Plutarch, consoles Alexander in his remorse for the 



THE MORAL FACULTY. 



173 



murder of Clitus, with the assurance that whatever is done by the 
ruler is right ; in other words, " the king can do no wrong." Pyrro, 
the founder of the sceptical school, also taught that nothing is, in 
truth, just or unjust, good or bad, but men do all things by law and 
custom. 

The most prominent asserter of this doctrine however, seems to 
have been Protagoras, who makes all things to be phenomenal and 
relative, nothing in itself true, but only as it seems to the observer 
to be this or that. He is repeatedly cited by Plato as affirming that 
whatever things to any city seem to be just and good, the same are 
so to that city, so long as they seem so, 

Epicurus also denies the essential and immutable nature of justice 
and injustice, right and wrong, and teaches that these things are 
nothing in themselves, but arise wholly from the compacts which men 
make for their own convenience and advantage. Carneades zeal- 
ously maintained the same doctrine. 

In modern times Gassendi and Hobbes have resolutely advocated 
the same opinion, the latter repeatedly affirming that in the state 
of nature nothing is either just or unjust, nothing right or wrong, 
but that it belongs to the state, the government, to determine what 
shall be just, and what unjust or wrong (De Give, and Leviathan). 

Among the scholastic theologians of the middle ages, we find traces 
also of the same general view, denying that anything is intrinsically 
and naturally just or unjust, good or evil, but referring all such dis- 
tinctions to the arbitrary will and pleasure of the Supreme Being. 
Thus Ockham and his followers : Nullum actum malum esse nisi 
rpiatenus a deo prohibitum, et qui non possit fieri bonus si a deo 
precipiatur ; et e converse. In more recent times such writers as 
Hume, Hutcheson, Paley, Bentham, Mill, followed by some theolo- 
gians of note, have sought to place the foundation of moral obligation 
in utility or expediency. 

On the other hand, in favor of the doctrine which we maintain, that 
moral distinctions are eternal and immutable in their nature, abso- 
lute and not relative and phenomenal, founded not in the laws and 
customs of men, nor yet in the arbitrary will of God, but in the very 
nature of things, may be found, both among philosophers and theolo- 
gians, names of the highest authority and in the greatest number. 

Not to mention the schools of ancient philosophy of highest worth, 
the Platonic and Aristotelian systems agreeing in this, but confining 
ourselves to the philosophical and theological writers of modern 



174 



STUDIES IX PHILOSOPHY. 



times, we may cite the following : Cudworth, Price, Clarke, Butler, 
Reid, Stewart, Wardlaw, Macintosh, Robert Hall, Chalmers, Char- 
nock, Edwards, Bellamy, Dwight, Emmons, McCosh. 

In the treatise " concerning eternal and immutable morality," 
Cudworth maintains the position " that it is so far from being tine 
that all moral good and evil, just and unjust, are mere arbitrary and 
factitious things, that are created wholly by will ; that (if we would 
speak properly) we must needs say that nothing is morally good or 
evil, just or unjust by mere will without nature, because everything 
is what it is by nature and not by will." And again " that it is not 
possible that any command of God or man should oblige otherwise 
than by virtue of that which is cf>vcrei 6Y/<aiov, naturally just. And 
though particular promises and commands be made by will, yet it is 
not will but nature that obli^eth to the doincr of things promised 
and commanded, or makes them debita, such things as ought to be 
done." For mere will cannot change the moral nature of acting, nor 
the nature of intellectual beings " (Immutable Morality, pp. 14. 18). 

In his " Demonstration of the Being and Attributes of God," Dr. 
Samuel Clarke thus argues : " From what hath been said upon this 
head it follows, that the true ground and foundation of all eternal 
moral obligations, is this ; (namely the forementioned necessary and 
eternal different relations which different things bear one to another; 
and the consequent fitness or unfitness of the application of different 
things, or different relations one to another, unavoidably arising from 
that difference of the things themselves) ; these very same reasons, 
I say, which always and necessarily do determine the will of God, 
as hath been before shown, ought also constantly to determine the 

will of all subordinate intelligent beings They who found all 

moral obligations ultimately in the will of God, must recur at length 
to the same thing, only with this difference that they do not clearly 
explain how the nature and will of God himself must be necessarily 
good and just, as I have endeavored to do. They who found all 
moral obligations only upon laws made for the good of societies hold 
an opinion, which (besides that 'tis fully confuted by what has been 
already said concerning the eternal and necessary difference of 
things) is moreover so directly and manifestly contradictory and 
inconsistent with itself, that it seems strange it should not have been 
more commonly taken notice of. For if there be no difference be- 
tween good and evil, antecedent to all laws, there can be no reason 
given why any laws should be made at all, when all things are nat- 



THE MORAL FACULTY. 175 



urally indifferent. To say that laws are necessary to be made for 
the good of mankind, is confessing that certain things tend to the 
good of mankind, that is, to the preserving and perfecting of their 
nature, which wise men therefore think necessary to be established 
by laws. And if the reason why certain things are established by 
wise and good laws, is because those things tend to the good of man- 
kind, 'tis manifest they were good, antecedent to their being con- 
firmed by laws. Otherwise, if they were not good antecedent to all 
laws, 'tis evident there could be no reason why such laws should be 
made, rather than the contrary, which is the greatest absurdity in 
the world" (Demonstration, etc. pp. 124, 125). 

To the same effect Charnocke thus discourses : " The moral law 
is not properly a mere act of God's will considered in itself, or a 
tyrannical edict, like those of whom it may well be said, ' stat pro 
ratione voluntas/ but it commands those things which are good in 
their own nature, and prohibits those things which are in their own 
nature evil ; and therefore is an act of his wisdom and righteousness, 
the result of his wise counsel, and an extract of his pure nature ; as 
all the laws of just lawgivers are not only the acts of their will, but 
of a will governed by reason and justice, and for the good of the 
public whereof they are conservators. If the moral commands of 
Gotl were only acts of his will, and had not an intrinsic necessity, 
reason, and goodness, God might have commanded quite the con- 
trary, and made a contrary law, whereby that which we now call 
vice, might have been canonized for virtue ; he might then have 
forbid any worship of him, love to him, fear of his name ; he might 
then have commanded murders, thefts, adulteries " (Existence and 
Attributes of God, p. 50). 

President Edwards holds the following language : " Others say, 
the will of God is the primary foundation of moral obligation. But 
the will of God is either benevolent or not. If it be benevolent, 
and on that account the foundation of moral obligation, it is not the 
source of obligation merely because it is the will of God, but because 
it is benevolent, and is of a tendency to promote happiness, and this 
places the foundation of obligation in a tendency to happiness, and 
not primarily in the will of God. But if the will of God, and that 
which is the expression of it, the divine law, be allowed to be not 
benevolent, and yet are the foundation of obligation, we are obliged 
to conform to them whatever they be, however malevolent or oppo- 
site to holiness and goodness the requirements be. But this, I pre- 



176 



STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY. 



sume, none will pretend. If the will or law of God be the primary 
foundation or reason of our obligation to virtue, it is the primary 
rule and standard of virtue, and therefore right in itself, whatever it 
be, however malicious, envious or tyrannical ; which is absurd. On 
the supposition that the will or law of God is the primary foundation, 
reason, and standard of right and virtue, every attempt to prove 
the moral perfections or attributes of God is absurd ; for in every 
such attempt the idea which the author of that attempt has of right 
is set up as the rule or standard of right ; and the divine attributes 
are compared with it, and proved, or attempted to be proved, to be 
conformed to it. But if the divine will, or which is the same, the 
divine moral attributes, be the primary standard of right, all we 
have to do is to inquire what that will is, and whatever it is, whether 
benevolent or malevolent, it is the standard of right, the pattern of 
virtue, and the source of obligation " (Works, Vol. ii. p. 541). 

Perhaps no one of the great American divines has more clearly 
and fully expressed himself on this matter than Dr. Bellamy, the 
friend and pupil of Edwards : "If we should suppose (as some do), 
that there is nothing right or wrong antecedent to a consideration 
of the positive will and law of God, the great Governor of the world, 
and that right and wrong result, originally, from his sovereign will 
and absolute authority entirely, then these absurdities would una- 
voidably follow : 

" 1. That the moral perfections of God are empty names, without 
any significance at all. For if there be no intrinsic moral fitness 
and unfitness in things, no right nor wrong, then there is no such 
thing as moral beauty or moral deformity, and so no foundation in 
the nature of things for any moral propensity ; that is, there is noth- 
ing for God to love or hate, considered as a moral agent. There 
can be no inclination or disposition in him to love right or hate 
wrong, if there be no such thing as right and wrong 

" 2. That in the nature of things there is no more reason to love 
and obey God than there is to hate and disobey him, there being, 
in the nature of things, no right nor wrong. Just as if God was not 
infinitely worthy of our highest esteem and most perfect obedience ; 
and just as if, in the nature of things, there was no reason why we 
should love and obey him, but merely because he is the greatest and 
strongest, and says we must — than which nothing can be more evi- 
dently absurd. But if these things are so, then it will follow, 

" 3. That there is no reason why he should require his creatures to 



THE MORAL FACULTY. 



177 



love and obey him. or forbid the contrary ; or why he should reward 
the one or punish the other, there being, in the nature of things, no 
right nor wrong ; and so the foundation of God's law is overturned, 
and all religion torn up by the roots, and nothing is left but arbitrary 
tyranny and servile subjection." 

He then proceeds to consider the theory " that there is nothing 
right or wrong antecedent to a consideration of the general good of 
the whole system of intelligent created beings ; and that right and 
wrong result originally and entirely from the natural tendency of 
things to promote or hinder the general good of the whole " ; from 
which he deduces the following " manifest absurdities " : 

u 1. That the moral perfections of God entirely consist in or result 
from a disposition to love his creatures supremely, and seek their 
happiness as his only end." 

" 2. That God loves virtue and rewards it merely because it tends 
to make his creatures happy, and hates vice and punishes it merely 
because it tends to make his creatures miserable." 

" 3. That he requires us to love and obey him merely because it 
tonds to make us happy, and forbids the contrary merely because it 
tends to make us miserable." 

" 4. That we are under no obligations to love God, but merely 
because it tends to make us happy, and that it is no crime to hate 
and blaspheme God, but merely because it tends to make us miser- 
able." 

" From all which," he concludes, " it is evident, to demonstration, 
that right and wrong do neither result from the mere will and love 
of God, nor from any tendency of things to promote or hinder the 
happiness of God's creatures. It remains therefore, that there is an 
intrinsic moral fitness and unfitness, absolutely, in things themselves, 
as that we should love the infinitely glorious God, is, in the nature 
of things, infinitely fit and right ; and to hate and blaspheme him, 
is, in the nature of things, infinitely unfit and wrong; and that ante- 
cedent to any consideration of advantage or disadvantage, reward 
or punishment, or even of the will or law of God. And hence it is 
that God infinitely loves right and hates wrong, and appears so 
infinitely engaged to reward the one and punish the other. And 
hence his law and government are holy, just and good " (Works, 
Vol. i. pp. 36-38, note). 

Dr. Dwight thus reasons : " If virtue and vice are such only be- 
cause God willed them to be such, if virtue is excellent and vice 
12 



178 



STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY. 



worthless only because he willed them to be so, then vice in itself 
is just as excellent as virtue, and virtue just as worthless as vice. 
Let me ask, can any man believe this to be true ? 

" Further, the supposition that virtue is founded in the will of God, 
implies that God willed virtue to be excellent without any reason. 
If virtue and vice had originally, or as they were seen by the eye 
of God, no moral difference in their nature, then there was plainly 
no reason why God should prefer, or why he actually preferred, one 
of them to the other. There was, for example, no reason why he 
chose and required that intelligent creatures should love him and 
each other, rather than that they should hate him and hate each 
other. In choosing and requiring that they should exercise this 
love, God acted, therefore, without any motive whatever ; certainly 
no sober man will attribute this conduct to God." He proceeds to 
show that according to this doctrine it follows that the character of 
wicked men and of fiends is in itself just as lovely and excellent as 
that of angels ; and if God had so willed it, Satan remaining in 
every respect the same as man, would have been morally excellent 
and lovely, and Gabriel morally worthless and detestable. 4t Must 
not he who can believe this doctrine," he asks, " as easily believe 
that if God had willed it two and two would have become five ? 
Is it at all easier to believe that truth and falsehood can inter- 
change their natures than that a square and a circle can interchange 
theirs '? " 

He also proceeds to show that on this principle the character and 
will of. God are no longer excellent in their own nature, but merely 
because he determines that they are so. The question, therefore, 
respecting his moral nature, whether he is benevolent or malevolent, 
becomes merely nugatory, there being no original difference between 
the two things, but only such as he makes by an arbitrary act of 
will (Theology, Vol. iii. pp. 442-445). 

The matter is set in a very clear light also by Dr. Emmons : 
" Everything has a nature which is peculiar to itself, and which is 
essential to its very existence. Light has a nature by which it is 
distinguished from darkness ; sweet has a nature by which it is dis- 
tinguished from bitter ; animals have a nature by which they are 
distinguished from men ; men have a nature by which they are dis- 
tinguished from angels; angels have a nature by which they are 
distinguished from God ; and God has a nature by which he is dis- 
tinguished from all other beings. Now such different natures lay 



THE MOEAL FACULTY. 



179 



a foundation for different obligations, and different obligations lay 
a foundation for virtue and vice in all their different degrees. As 
virtue and vice therefore, take their origin from the nature of things, 
so the difference between moral good and moral evil is as immutable 
as the nature of things from winch it results. It is as impossible in 
the nature of things that the essential distinction between virtue and 
vice should cease, as that the essential distinction between light 
and darkness, bitter and sweet should cease. These distinctions do 
not depend upon the mere will of the Deity ; for so long as he con- 
tinues the nature of things, no law or command of his can change 
light into darkness, bitter into sweet, or virtue into vice. And this 
is what we mean by the assertion that virtue and vice are essentially 
different in the nature of things " (Works, Vol. iv. p. 144. Sermon x.). 

" "Wherein is it," says Dr. Chalmers, " that the rightness of moral- 
ity lies ? or whence is it that this rightness is derived ? "Whether^ 
more particularly, it have an independent rightness of its own, or it 
be right only because God wills it ? It might be proper to state 
that between the two terms of the alternative as last put, our clear 
preference, or rather our absolute and entire conviction, is on the 
side of the former. We hold that morality has a stable, inherent, 
and essential rightness in itself, and that anterior to or apart from, 
whether the tacit or expressed will of any being in the universe. 

Xow it is here that we join issue with our antagonists, and 

affirm that God is no more the creator of virtue than he is of truth ; 
that justice and benevolence were virtues previous to any forth- 
putting of will or jurisprudence on his part, and that he no more 
ordained them to be virtues than he ordained that the three angles 
of a triangle should be equal to two right angles " (Institutes of 
Theology, Vol. i. pp. 22, 23). 

To the same effect ATcCosh: " All who have made ethics a subject 
of study must know how perilous it is to found virtue on the will of 
God. An action is holy not because God wills it, but he wills it 
because it is holy. The person who reverses this maxim may intend 
to benefit the cause of religion, but in reality he is doing it serious 
damage" (Divine Government, p. 324). 

The student of English literature will hardly need to be reminded 
of the passage, too long for citation here, remarkable at once for its 
eloquence and its severity, in which Jlobert Hall, in his sermon on 
" The Sentiments Proper to the Present Crisis," denounces the utili- 
tarian theory of morals, in the course of which, after contrasting that 



180 



STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY. 



theory with the more sensible, rational views of the preceding age, 
and of the ancient philosophers, he indignantly asks, " How is it 
that on a subject on which men have thought deeply from the mo- 
ment they began to think, and where, consequently, whatever is 
entirely and fundamentally new must be fundamentally false ; how 
is it that in contempt of the experience of past ages, and of all pre- 
cedents human and divine, we have ventured into a perilous path, 
which no eye has explored, no foot has trod, and have undertaken, 
after the lapse of six thousand years, to manufacture a morality of 
our own, to decide by a cold calculation of interest, by a leger-book 
of profit and loss, the preference of truth to falsehood, of piety 
to blasphemy, and of humanity and justice to treachery and 
blood ? " 

" The system which founds morality on utility," he adds in a note, 
" a utility, let it be always remembered, confined to the purposes of 
the present world, issued with ill-omen from the school of infidelity. 
It was first broached, I believe, certainly first brought into general 
notice, by Mr. Hume in his Treatise on Morals, which he himself 
pronounced incomparably the best he ever wrote. It was incom- 
parably the best for his purpose ; nor is it easy to imagine a mind 
so acute as his did not see the effect it would have in setting morality 
and religion afloat, and substituting for the stability of principle the 
looseness of speculation and opinion." After presenting in contrast 
the Nichomachean morals of Aristotle, and the ethical philosophy of 
Cicero, " the one composed by the greatest master of reason, the 
other of eloquence, the world ever saw," and showing the superiority 
of these systems to that of mere expediency, be continues : " How 
humiliating the consideration that, with superior advantages, our 
moral systems should be infinitely surpassed in warmth and grandeur 
by those of pagan times, and that the most jejune and comfortless 
that ever entered the mind of man, and the most abhorrent from 
the spirit of religion, should have even become popular in a Christian 
country!" (Works, Vol. i. pp. 97, 98, 101). 

It will be noticed, by a comparison of the above statements, how 
fully these several writers agree in their estimate of the doctrine 
which denies the eternal and immutable distinction of right and 
wrong, and places the ground of that distinction in the laws and 
customs of society, or in the arbitrary will of God. The main ob- 
jections urged against that doctrine by subsequent writers will be 
found substantially embo'died in the extracts above given from 



THE MORAL FACULTY. 



181 



Clarke and Ed-wards ; indeed, they are such as -would occur to any- 
sound and independent thinker. 

Of those above cited who reject the doctrine that right and wrong 
are founded in the will of God, some, it is but justice to say, while 
holding the distinction of right and wrong to be eternal and immu- 
table, and founded in the very nature of things, regard the tendency 
to greatest good or universal happiness as the particular element in 
the nature of things on which the obligation to virtue rests ; thus 
Edwards, Dwight, and Taylor. There is a reason, they would say, 
why virtue is obligatory, and why the laws of God and man require 
it — a reason to be found in the very nature of things — and that is 
the tendency of virtue to promote the highest happiness. Others, 
however, are content to regard the right as in itself binding, itself 
ultimate, without seeking to place it on anything beyond. This is 
the view taken in the preceding article. 



IY. 



THE PROVINCE OF IMAGINATION IN SACRED ORATORY. 1 

The specific nature and object of this Association 
seem to prescribe a theme having reference to oratory, 
and specially to the oratory of the pulpit. I propose 
to discuss, then, the True Province of Imagination in 
Sacred Oratory, whether, and how far, this faculty 
may be of use to the preacher. 

As the word, however, is used of late with consider- 
able latitude, it may be well first to define what I 
mean by imagination. 

I understand, then, by this term, not the mere power 
which the mind possesses of forming images of absent 
material objects, which is, in reality, only memory in 
one of its forms, but rather the faculty of the ideal — 
the power of conceiving and representing under sensible 
forms the purely ideal. It is that which makes the 
difference between the copyist and the creator. It is 
that which lies at the foundation of all true art, whose 
legitimate office it is to carry us beyond the merely 
phenomenal, and place us in the presence of the real, 
the truly beautiful. It is that which, in the well-known 
words of the poet, 

" bodies forth 
The form of things unknown." 

1 An Address delivered before the Rhetorical Society of the Chicago 
Theological Seminary at its Anniversary in April, 1865. From the Bib- 
liotheca Sacra for January, 1867, Vol. xxiv. No. 93. 
182 



PROVINCE OF IMAGINATION IN SACRED ORATORY. 183 



" To imagine, in this high and true sense of the word," 
says Fleming, " is to realize the ideal, to make intel- 
ligible truths descend into the forms of sensible nature, 
to represent the invisible by the visible, the infinite by 
the finite. In this view of it, imagination may be 
regarded as the differentia of man — the distinctive 
mark which separates him, a grege mutorum. That 
the inferior animals have memory and what has been 
called passive imagination, is proved by the fact that 
they dream, and that in this state the sensuous im- 
pressions made on them during their waking hours are 
reproduced. But they have no trace of that higher 
faculty and function which transcends the sphere of 
sense, and which out of elements supplied by things 
seen and temporal can create new objects, the contem- 
plation of which lifts us to the infinite and the un- 
seen, and gives us thoughts which wander through 
eternity." 1 

How far, now, is this faculty of the ideal admissible 
and of use in the pulpit ? Such is the question before 
us — a question, I need not say, of practical importance 
to one entering the sacred ministry. 

At the first glance, one would say the case is too 
plain to admit of hesitation. The faculties of the mind 
are all of use, and were intended, by their Creator to 
be used ; nor is there one among them which is not 
needed by the orator in the exercise of his art. The 
fact that among the instruments with which nature 
has furnished the mind we find this faculty is in itself 
an argument in its favor ; and, unless reason can be 
shown to the contrary, it is fair to presume that it is 
legitimately at the service of the pulpit orator. 

1 Vocabulary of Philosophy. 



184 



STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY. 



There are, however, those who would debar this 
faculty entirely from the pulpit as unworthy of the 
sacred office. It is the preacher's business, they tell 
us, to deal with facts, and not with fancies ; with 
realities, and not with fictions and figments of the 
brain. They would rule out the ideal, therefore, as 
wholly at variance with the real. 

This, however, is, I need hardly say, entirely a false 
view of the nature of the ideal. The ideal and the 
real are not opposites, are not necessarily at variance. 
The two are, on the contrary, in their highest range, 
one and the same. The material, the sensible,- the 
tangible, are not the only realities, are not the highest 
and chiefest truths. There are facts, the grandest and 
most important, that lie beyond the range of sense. 
The whole realm of the spiritual, the very realm witli 
which the preacher has to do, is in its very nature 
invisible, intangible, ideal, but none the less real. The 
philosophy unfortunately becoming prevalent of late, 
which comprises only the phenomenal, and ignores a 
cause ; which recognizes only fixed and inexorable 
laws, and knows nothing of a lawgiver ; to which 
nothing is a reality but the sensible and material uni- 
verse and its forces, — this surely is not the philosophy 
of the Christian religion. Christianity recognizes and 
has to do with something beyond and above the merely 
phenomenal and material — with the invisible and the 
spiritual. It deals with facts and realities ; but its 
facts and realities are of this higher sort. To reject 
the ideal, then, as necessarily at variance with the real, 
is strangely to ignore the true nature, not of the ideal 
only, but of Christianity itself, and to shut out the 
latter from its highest and most legitimate sphere. 



PROVINCE OF DIAGIXA i ION IN SACRED ORATORY. 



183 



The preacher has to do with realities : but so long as 
those realities pertain to the realm of the ideal and 
spiritual, and not to the realm of sense, the faculty of 
the ideal may well be of service to him in conceiving 
and presenting those realities. He has to do with 
facts ; but it may well be that the clear apprehension 
and proper statement of those facts will call into 
requisition the faculty of ideal representation. It re- 
quires a certain degree of imagination to be able to 
state correctly the simplest historic fact, much more 
those great and peculiar facts which Christianity reveals. 

It is objected to the use of the imagination in pulpit 
oratory, that it tends to an absurd and fanciful style, 
a redundancy of figures of speech, and the like serious 
defects. It is not, however, I suspect, to the imagina- 
tive faculty, but rather to the abuse, or even it may be 
to the entire absence and neglect, of that faculty, that 
these defects are reallv to be ascribed. A lively imasr- 
ination, under the control and guidance of a correct 
taste, would be the surest preventive often of these 
very faults. It is not imagination, but the want of 
imagination, that leads to the absurd mingling of meta- 
phor that sometimes occurs in public speaking ; as 
when, for example, a certain legislative orator, not 
long since, spoke of the wheels of government as blocked 
by sharks, which, like the locusts of Egypt, settled on 
every green thing. The imagination never perpetrates 
such blunders. That much abused faculty, had it 
existed to the extent of a grain of mustard-seed in 
that man. would forever have kept him from all such 
absurdity. 

The orator is essentially an artist ; his the highest 
of all arts — the art of persuasion ; and ihe highest of 



186 



STUDIES IX PHILOSOPHY. 



all oratory is that of the- pulpit, as dealing with themes 
the most profound and interests the most momentous. 
It were strange, surely, if this artist were denied the 
most potent instrument of his art and of all art ; if 
this orator were debarred the use of that which is in 
all other cases essential to the highest and most effec- 
tive oratory. For in oratory, as in all art, it is mainly 
the ideal element that imparts the peculiar charm, 
nameless and indescribable, which distinguishes the 
productions of true genius. 

Without discussing further the right of the pulpit 
orator to avail himself of this faculty, I proceed to 
mention certain specific advantages to be derived from 
its proper and legitimate use. 

And first it is obvious that the higher and bolder 
fights of oratory are largely due to the faculty of the 
ideal. When in the full tide and tumult of excited 
feeling the orator, carried away by the impulse of the 
moment and the force of the argument, leaps at a 
bound over the limits of time and place, and summons 
the absent and the invisible, and even calls up the 
dead to bear witness to his words, we have an illustra- 
tion of the true power and province of imagination in 
oratory. An instance of this occurs in the Oration on 
the Crown, where Demosthenes suddenly appeals, in 
confirmation of what he is saying, to the illustrious 
dead who rushed into danger at Marathon, and those 
who stood side by side at Platea. Hardly less sublime 
than this apostrophe of tjie great Athenian orator is 
the passage in which the apostle to the Gentiles, having 
named many persons illustrious for faith, by a bold 
and striking figure gathers these ancient heroes from 
the past as spectators of the present — - a cloud of 



PROVINCE OF IMAGINATION IN SACRED ORATORY. 1 87 



spiritual forms hovering over the race-course where 
the Christian runs for the prize of his high calling : 
" Seeing then that ye are encompassed with so great a 
cloud of witnesses" Bolder and more sublime than 
either is the remarkable passage in which Isaiah 
describes the descent of the monarch of Babylon to the 
realms of Sheol. From their shadowy thrones the 
kings and nations of antiquity rise to receive the 
coming stranger: "Hell from beneath is moved for 
thee to meet thee at thy coming ; it stirreth up the 
dead for thee, even all the chief ones of the earth ; it 
hath raised up from their thrones all the kings of the 
nations." 

I can hardly forbear to add, from the oratory of the 
present day, a further illustration of the use and power 
of the imagination in the bolder flights of eloquence. 
When over the ruins of Fort Sumter the old historic 
flag was raised again, the orator, 1 inspired by the 
sublimity of the occasion, and conscious that he was 
uttering the sentiments of the nation, after charging 
upon the ambitious political leaders of the South the 
whole guilt of this war, thus proceeds to arraign them 
for retribution : "A day will come when God will 
reveal justice, and arraign at his bar these mighty 
miscreants, and then every orphan that their bloody 
war has made, and every widow that sits sorrowing, 
and every maimed and wounded sufferer, and every 
burdened heart in all the wide regions of this land, will 
rise up and come before the Lord to lay upon these 
chief culprits of modern history their awful witness ; 
and from a thousand battle-fields shall rise up armies 
of airy witnesses, who with the memory of their awful 

1 Henry Ward Beecher, in 1865. 



188 



STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY. 



sufferings shall confront these miscreants with shrieks 
of fierce accusation, and every pale and starved prisoner 
shall raise his skinny hand in judgment. Blood shall 
call out for vengeance, and tears shall flow for justice, 
and grief shall silently beckon, the heart-smitten shall 
wail for justice, good men and angels will cry out, 
6 How long, Lord, how long wilt thou not avenge ? ' 
And then these guiltiest and most remorseless traitors, 
these high and cultured men with might and wisdom 
used for the destruction of their country, these most 
accursed and detested of all criminals, that have 
drenched a continent in needless blood and moved the 
foundations of their times with hideous crimes and 
cruelty, caught up in black clouds full of voices of 
vengeance and lurid with punishment, shall be whirled 
aloft, and plunged downward forever and ever in an 
endless retribution, while God shall say : Thus shall it 
be with all who betray their country. And all in heaven 
and upon earth will say, Amen." 

Thus to summon at the bar of divine justice the 
authors of this great crime, and there to confront 
them with all those whom their cruel ambition has 
made desolate, and with the dead from a thousand 
battle-fields, while it is one of the boldest flights of 
oratory, is also a striking instance of the power of the 
ideal. 

2. The orator is dependent on the imagination for 
the power of clear and vivid description of absent objects. 
This power is of great service to the orator. It enables 
him, by the skilful touch of the artist, to make his 
hearers, to all intents, spectators of events however 
remote and scenes however distant, as at the waving 
of some magician's wand they start into life before us, 



PROVINCE OF IMAGINATION IN SACRED ORATORY. 189 



and stand out with the distinctness of reality before 
our eyes. This is in no small degree the secret of 
effective oratory and the hiding of its power. The 
tame and common-place speaker tells us that the thing 
occurred thus and thus — that the murderer entered 
by a dark passage, ascended the stairs, entered the 
chamber, dispatched his victim, and made his escape, 
passing down such a street ; all which may be very 
true, but scarcely more impressive than to be told that 
the diameter of the earth's orbit is so many thousand 
miles. The true orator, by a few skilful touches, 
brings the whole scene before us — the victim, the 
approach of danger, the entrance, the blow, the escape 
of the assassin. Under the handling of a Webster we 
do not so much hear or read, as see these things 
transpiring before our own eyes. It is the imagination 
which enables the orator thus to seize upon the details 
and impart reality to the picture. 

A fine illustration of this occurs in the sermon of 
Horace Bushnell on Unconscious Influence, in which 
he has occasion to depict the effects which would follow 
the withdrawal of light from the earth. " Many," he 
tells us, " will be ready to think that light is a very 
tame and feeble instrument, because it is noiseless. An 
earthquake, for example, is to them a much more 
vigorous and effective agency. Hear how it comes 
thundering through the solid foundations of nature. 
It racks a whole continent. The noblest works of 
man — cities, monuments, and temples — are in a 
moment levelled to the ground or swallowed down the 
opening gulfs of fire. Little do they think that the 
light of every morning — the soft and genial and silent 
light — is an agent many times more powerful. But 



190 



STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY. 



let the light of the morning cease and return no more ; 
let the hour of morning come and bring with it no 
dawn ; the outcries of a horror-stricken world fill the 
air, and make, as it were, the darkness audible ; the 
beasts go wild and frantic at the loss of the sun ; the 
vegetable growths turn pale and die, and chili creeps 
on, and frosty winds begin to howl across the freezing- 
earth ; colder aud yet colder is the night ; the vital 
blood at length of all creatures stops congealed ; down 
goes the frost toward the earth's centre ; the heart of 
the sea is frozen ; nay, the earthquakes are themselves 
frozen in under their fiery caverns. The very globe 
itself, too, and all the fellow planets that have lost their 
sun, are become mere balls of ice, swinging silent in 
the darkness." A mind less imaginative would never 
have conceived the idea of depicting the effect of con- 
tinued darkness, or, if it had attempted anything of 
the kind, would have been content with the general 
statement, that the earth would become uncomfortable 
to the inhabitants, and everything would freeze. 

3. The imagination is of service to the orator by 
contributing to the clear and forcible statement of truth. 
It imparts definiteness of conception and sharpness of 
outline to his own mental views, and what he thus 
sharply and definitely apprehends he is able the more 
clearly and forcibly to present to his hearers. Truths 
and arguments thus presented stand out in bold relief, 
and with stereoscopic distinctness, on the field of vision, 
not mere flat surfaces, but with length, breadth, and 
thickness of their own, each casting a shadow. 

This effect is produced sometimes by the suggestion 
of the most apt word or forcible expression. Much 
depends often on the choice of a single word. In a 



PROVINCE OF IMAGINATION IN SACRED ORATORY. 191 

sermon on the Concealment of Sin South speaks of the 
great and nourishing condition of some of the topping 
sinners of the world, and of the remorseless rage of 
conscience. Alluding to the fact that justice is repre- 
sented as blind, he tells us that " therefore it finds out 
the sinner not with its eyes, but with its hands — not 
by seeing, but by striking." 

Sometimes the effect is produced by a bold and 
startling metaphor, giving vividness and intensity to 
the expression, as a sudden flash in a dark night brings 
out the most distant objects, and lights up the whole 
horizon. Thus the same preacher speaks of the sinner's 
conscience as " hitting him in the teeth " ; of the devil 
"spreading his wing" over the sinner, so as to keep 
him quiet in sin and prevent his taking the alarm ; of 
the covetous man as " greedier than the sea, and bar- 
renner than the shore" ; of the perjured shop-keeper, 
" who sits retailing away heaven and salvation for 
pence and half-pence, and seldom vends any commodity 
but he sells his soul with it, like brown paper, into the 
bargain." 1 The terrible earnestness and force of these 
expressions startle us. The sentences of such a writer 
are, like Ezekiel's vision, self-moving and full of eyes 
round about. We pick our way among them cau- 
tiously, as past the cages of wild beasts in a menagerie, 
that glare at us as we go by, and seem ready to spring 
from behind their iron bars. The effect of a lively 
imagination in giving intensity and vividness to the 
conceptions and utterances of the preacher is well 
illustrated in the description which Dr. Bushnell gives 
of the human passions, in the discourse on The Dignity 
of Human Nature shown from its Ruins : " Here, 

1 Sermon on Covetousness. 



192 



STUDIES IX PHILOSOPHY. 



within the soul's gloomy chamber, the loosened pas- 
sions rage and chafe, impatient of their law ; here 
huddle on the wild and desultory thoughts ; here the 
imagination crowds in shapes of glory and disgust, 
tokens both, and mockeries of its own creative power, 
no longer in the keeping of reason ; here sits remorse, 
scowling and biting her chain ; here creep out the 
fears, a meagre and pale multitude ; here drives on 
the will in his chariot of war ; here lie trampled the 
great aspirations, groaning in immortal thirst ; here 
the blasted affections, weeping out their life in silent 
injury ; all that you see without in the wars, revenges, 
and crazed religions of the world, is faithfully repre- 
sented in the appalling disorders of your own spirit." 

How vividly is a simple truth presented under the 
following clear and well-sustained metaphor. " They 
[the revolutionary movements of society] mark revo- 
lutions of the wheel of progress. In the dim and 
distant past the strokes of that wheel are heard only at 
vast intervals. Like the leap of Hesiod's horses of the 
god's, while making one bound, awful ages have passed 
away. So of the car of social progress. The wheel- 
strokes at first fall on the ear, .solemn and slow, over 
the vast and twilight profound. But quickening with 
time, they grow more and more rapid as they approach, 
till at length they become undistinguishable, and sweep 
by us with the continuous rush of the steam-car, hur- 
rying, storm-like, to its goal." 1 

One hundred years ago, along the aisles and arches 
of the venerable abbey where are gathered the ashes 
of England's most illustrious dead, and where from the 
walls look down the busts and statues of her statesmen, 

1 Address of Dr. Post of St. Louis, on Na-tional Regeneration. 



PROVINCE OF DI AGINATION IN SACRED ORATORY. 193 



her warriors, her poets, a clear, sharp voice rang out, 
in tones which must have fallen with startling effect 
upon the courtly audience, the following sentences :- 
" And therefore for a man to run headlong into the 
bottomless pit, while the eye of a seeing conscience 
assures him that it is bottomless and open, and all 
return from it desperate aii^ impossible; while his 
ruin stares him in the face, and the sword of vengeance 
points directly at his heart, still to press on to the 
embraces of his sin, is a problem unresolvable upon 
any other ground but that sin infatuates before it 
destroys. For Judas to receive and swallow the sop 
when his Master gave it him seasoned with those ter- 
rible words, 1 It had been good for that man if he had 
never been born,' surely this argued a furious appetite 
and a strong stomach, that could thus catch at a morsel 
with the fire and brimstone all flaming about it, and, 
as it were, digest death itself, and make a meal upon 
perdition." 1 

It is not, however, solely by the intensity and energy 
which it imparts to his conceptions that imagination 
contributes to the effectiveness of the orator. Quite as 
much is due, perhaps, to the purity of style and eleva- 
tion of sentiment which it tends to produce. There is 
no one quality more favorable to clearness and purity 
of style, to that crystalline transparency that sets a 
thought in a frame-work of light, and makes it stand 
forth in its beauty like a star in the clear azure, than 
the faculty of the ideal. It has been said of Plato that 
his words must have grown into their places, so spon- 
taneous do they seem, and so fitting. A recent English 
reviewer pronounces Milton's speech of Belial, in the 

1 Sermon by South, on the Practice of Religion enforced by Reason. 
13 



194 



STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY. 



debate of the fallen angels in Pandemonium, the great- 
est classical triumph, the highest achievement of the 
pure style, in English literature. 

Of Shelley the same critic remarks that the rhythm 
of some modulating air seems to move his words into 
their places without an effort of the poet, and almost 
without his knowledge ; while in the language of 
Wordsworth, on the other hand, we detect something 
of the taint of labor and of duty. As to elevation of 
sentiment, we all know how much it is in the power of 
a just and apt illustration to dignify, while it adorns, 
the subject treated, and thus to elevate the mind of the 
hearer. A happy instance of this occurs in the oration 
of Webster on the completion of the Bunker Hill 
Monument, when, by a simile at once apt and elegant, 
he likens the character of Washington to the grand 
and solid shaft that stood before him : " His public 
principles as firm as the earth on which it stands, his 
personal motives as pure as the serene heaven in which 
its summit is lost." When speaking of the motives 
that led to the peopling of New England, the same 
orator says of the May Flower: " Like the dove from 

the ark, she had put forth only to find rest The 

stars which guided her were the unobscured constella- 
tions of civil and religious liberty. Her deck was the 
altar of the living God. Fervent prayers, on bended 
knees, mingled morning and evening with the voices of 
the ocean and the sighing of the wind in her shrouds." 
With what beauty and dignity do these simple images 
invest the theme. 

When South tells us that the words of Jeremiah in 
the Lamentations are like the noise of a breaking 
heart, and when he compares an ungrateful heart that 



PROVINCE OF IMAGINATION IN SACRED ORATORY. 195 

is unmoved by acts of kindness to a rock which, beaten 
continuously by the waves, still throws them back into 
the bosom of the sea that sent them, but is not at all 
moved by any of them, we know not whether the force 
or the beauty of the comparison is the more to be 
admired. 

It may perhaps be thought that, while the imagina- 
tion contributes somewhat to the vividness and force 
of the more ornate and rhetorical portions of discourse, 
the more solid, and especially the argumentative por- 
tions, derive their power from a different source. Yet 
even in close and solid reasoning the faculty of the 
ideal is not, I suspect, wholly without its use. An 
illustration, or an apt and striking metaphor, that shall 
embody and project an abstract truth or a general 
principle into concrete reality, is often the most effective 
form of argument, as every orator well knows. How 
forcibly is the essential incompatibility of liberty with 
slavery, and the folly of seeking to combine them in 
one and the same system of social order, set forth by 
one of our own most gifted minds in the following 
metaphor : " We have thought to incorporate in our 
social and civil order, with eternal rights, human and 
divine, a vast wrong, most audaciously and flagrantly 
violative of both. We have thought to do this — to 
bind up the torch and magazine together ; and that 
with the self-consciousness of the nineteenth century 
burning and kindling upon it. The explosion has 
filled land and seas with our ruin. And now, in the 
work of reconstruction, shall we take up the blazing 
timbers and attempt to rebuild them into the national 
structure ? If so, we but labor in the very fire — we chal- 
lenge fate. We build conflagration, explosion, ruin, 



196 



STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY. 



into our architecture. Slavery, the sighs from her vast 
prison-house of past ages following her like a tempest, 
now stands before us, the confessed enemy of our na- 
tional life, reaching hands for readmittance across the 
gulf of public ruin and over the graves of half a gene- 
ration. Shall we clasp those hands again, reeking with 
the blood of a million of our countrymen ? A mighty 
army of melancholy heroic shadows forbid." 1 

Nothing contributes more to force of reasoning, 
especially in the detection of fallacies and exposing of 
absurdities and sophisms than that sharpness of the 
intellectual powers which we call wit, and which again 
closely borders on the ideal. An example of this we 
have in that solid reasoner, John Howe, driest of 
learned divines, who gives us in his " Living Temple " 
a specimen of satirical writing hardly equalled for 
keenness and unrelenting sarcasm by anything in the 
English language. Scarcely more pitiless is Voltaire 
or Carlyle, those terrible satirists. I refer to his dis- 
cussion of the .atomic theory of the soul, " which is 
said to be composed of very well polished, the smoothest 
and the roundest, atoms ; and which are of the neatest 
fashion, and every way, you must suppose, the best- 
conditioned the whole country could afford And 

now, because it is not to be thought that all atoms are 
rational, — for then the stump of a tree or a bundle of 
straw might serve to make a soul of, for ought we 
know, as good as the best," the question is raised, by 
what properties an atom shall be entitled to this privi- 
lege of being rational. Having ascertained that it is 
only those which are extremely minute that can be 
admitted to this honor, he proceeds to lament the 

1 Dr. Post on National Regeneration. 



PROVINCE OF IMAGINATION IN SACRED ORATORY. 197 

misfortune of those which prove to be too large : 
" Here, sure, the fate is very hard of those that come 
nearest the size, but only by a very little too much 
corpulency happen to be excluded as unworthy to be 
counted among the rational atoms." The question is 
then raised, " whether if an atom were perfectly round 
and so very rational, but by an unexpected misadven- 
ture it comes to have some little corner somewhere 
clapped on, it be hereby quite spoiled of its rationality ? 
And whether, again, one that comes somewhat near 
that figure, only it hath some little protuberances upon 
it, might not by a little filing, or the friendly rubs of 
other atoms, become rational ? " 

Supposing, now, a sufficient number of these little 
atoms brought together to constitute a soul, our merci- 
less logician is exercised to know the modus operandi 
of their proceeding — how, being so light and so round, 
they continue to hold together and keep their places in 
solemn council; how, being so much alike, the mathe- 
matical atoms can be distinguished from the moral ; 
how, since the particles are so constantly changing, it 
happens that any man should even continue of the 
same opinion with himself for a quarter of an hour 
together ; and finally, how the mere motion of these 
atoms constitutes thought. " They can frisk about, 
and fly to and fro, and interfere among themselves, 
and hit, and jostle, and tumble over one another, and 
that will contribute a great deal." 1 merciless rea- 
soner ! Is it not enough to vanquish the enemy and 
put him to rout, without pursuing him all around the 
horizon in such a ridiculous plight ? And, as if that 
were not enough, must you deliberately bind the slain 

J Living Temple, part i. chap. iii. 



198 



STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY. 



foe to your chariot, and drag it, as Achilles did the 
dead body of Hector, nine times around the walls ? 

4. I have spoken of the imagination as aiding the 
orator by imparting clearness and definiteness of con- 
ception, and thus contributing to the clear and forcible 
statement of truth. But further than this, it is needed, 
if I mistake not, in order to the right apprehension of 
many of the highest and noblest themes. Whatever 
appeals to the imagination can be rightly comprehended 
only by the imagination, as what addresses the reason 
and judgment can be appreciated only by those facul- 
ties. The Bible has much that is addressed to the 
plain common sense of man, and it requires common 
sense to understand these things. It has much that is 
addressed to the reasoning power, and some degree of 
the power of reasoning is requisite for the comprehen- 
sion of that. It has much, also, that is addressed to 
the imagination, and these things a mind destitute of 
imagination, or in which that power is but feebly de- 
veloped, can never rightly apprehend. There are some 
things in revelation, as there are some things in nature, 
and some in art, which reveal themselves in their true 
meaning and power only to the ideal faculty. It takes 
a poet or an artist to catch the true significance and 
feel the full power of some things. Niagara appeals to 
the sense of the sublime and the beautiful in the soul. 
A mind in which that sense is wanting, or but imper- 
fectly possessed, cannot understand the scene. The 
statistician comes with his facts and figures, the logician 
with his syllogisms, the mathematician with his dia- 
grams and logarithms, the mere man of science with his 
chemical analysis and his fossil remains ; and what do 
all these know or comprehend of the wonderful scene ? 



PROVINCE OF IMAGINATION IN SACRED ORATORY. 199 

As little, very likely, as the donkeys that carry them. 
If their heads are full of their own figures and syllo- 
gisms and fossils, if they are mere statisticians, mathe- 
maticians, logicians, chemists, and not poets as well, 
there is to them very little meaning or power in the 
wonderful vision. It reveals nothing. They have 
seen only a waterfall, have heard only a noise. There 
are lofty and glowing parages in the sacred scriptures, 
the full power and majesty of which are never perceived 
by any mind that is not itself highly endowed with the 
power of the ideal. There are themes of sacred oratory, 
which no man can properly touch, whose soul is not 
itself elevated, and in a sense inspired, by this superior 
power. 

There are some minds that nature has formed as dry 
as summer dust — unpoetic, pragmatic ; to whom a 
cowslip on the river's brim a yellow cowslip is, and 
nothing more. Devout minds they may be, and emi- 
nently so ; learned, even, for learning dwelleth ofttimes 
in dry and desert places ; but hard and stiff and angular 
and horny, and of cuticle thicker than the rhinoceros ; 
with little perception of the beautiful in nature or art, 
and lightly esteeming the little they do perceive. Such 
minds have their sphere. In the stern conflicts of 
opinion, in the controversies of the time, in the elabora- 
tion and defence of dogmas, in the laboratories and 
dusky mines, where heavy blows are to be struck, they 
are in place and at home. But in the wide realm of 
the imagination, the serene firmament of the ideal, 
they are wholly out of place and utterly lost. To such 
minds no small part, not of nature merely, but of reve- 
lation, must of necessity be essentially a sealed book. 
They lack that fine perception and quick sense of the 



200 



STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY. 



beautiful which would fit them to be true interpreters, 
whether in the realm of nature or of the spiritual. 
"We comprehend only that to which there is something 
respondent in our own nature ; and the greater the 
correspondence the fuller the sympathy and apprecia- 
tion. It takes a Goethe to understand a Goethe ; it 
takes a Caesar to do justice to a Caesar ; Napoleon III. 
is by position and career and character better fitted to 
write the life of Caesar, than Guizot or Thiers. To 
view a mountain rightly you must be yourself among 
the mountains, and not on the plain. One gets the 
true idea of Mont Blanc, not from the Vale of Cha- 
mouni, but on the summit of the Tete Noir or the Col 
De Baume. To comprehend the full majesty of the 
Jungfrau you must take your station on the Great 
Scheideck. 

It has been felt as a serious defect in many of our 
biblical interpreters that they lack the ideal element. 
Profoundly versed in the minutiae of verbal and gram- 
matical science, they seem profoundly insensible of 
anything higher, and fail to comprehend the majesty 
and beauty of the loftiest strains of David and Isaiah 
and John. They interpret the song of Miriam at the 
Red Sea, the psalm of Moses, or that grandest of all 
dramatic poems, the Apocalypse of John, with as little 
feeling, as little appreciation of the real beauty and 
majesty of the work, as if they were expounding the 
genealogical tables commencing with the names Adam, 
Seth, Enos. I would by no means be understood as 
depreciating the science of biblical criticism. Precision 
and science are necessary in the commentator ; but so, 
also, is some degree of soul. Napoleon placed the 
leading mathematician of Prance at the head of an 



PROVINCE OF DIAGINATION IX SACRED ORATORY. 201 

important bureau in his government, but was disap- 
pointed in the result. He found him, as he expressed 
it, always dealing with the infinitely little. It can 
hardly be denied that the tendency of modern biblical 
criticism is to minuteness of detail, often to the loss of 
the spirit and breadth and power of the argument or 
the passage as a whole. We must have precision and 
philological acumen ; but we must have something 
more. We must have grammatical science ; but let it 
keep its place. When Isaiah sits down at the grand 
organ, and its notes come rolling through the centuries, 
we care not to pause in the midst of some triumphant 
anthem to discuss the propriety of a dagesh-forte ; and 
when the great artist unrolls the mysterious canvas of 
the future, and describes the New Jerusalem coming 
down from God out of heaven, there is something of 
more importance to be considered, just then, than the 
accent of an iota or the necessity of a paulo-post future. 

For this reason we should prefer the comments of a 
Goethe, a Milton, a Burns on some passages of Scrip- 
ture to those of a De Wette or a Meyer ; Sir Walter 
Scott might hit the sense, we doubt not, in some cases, 
where his namesake misses it ; Tennyson and Bryant 
and Whittier might tell us some things that Robinson, 
Ellicott, and Alford have failed to see. It was the rare 
charm of that accomplished biblical scholar, the late 
Bela B. Edwards, that his soul was in sympathy with 
the beauty and majesty of the inspired word. He sat 
at the feet of the old prophets and singers of Israel, as 
the young artist at the feet of Michael Angelo. Nor 
was this the least excellence of the noble Stuart, that 
prince of biblical scholars. To peruse with him the 
pages of inspiration was like wandering with Church 



202 



STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY. 



among the Andes, or with Ruskin among the stones of 
Venice. 1 

What has been said of the biblical interpreter may 
with perhaps equal truth be affirmed of the theologian. 
Something of the ideal faculty is needed, something of 
the quick sense of the fit, the harmonious, the sym- 
metrical, in order to adjust the truth in its right pro- 
portions, and grasp in thought the completeness and 
grandeur of the Christian system. For lack of this 
there is something defective about many of our systems 
of theology. They are one-sided, disjointed, inharmo- 
nious, or they are narrow and incomplete. They 
fasten upon some one truth in some one of its many 
aspects, and make it stand for the whole ; as if a fly, 
alighting on some one of the ten thousand pinnacles of 
the Milan cathedral, should say : This, then, is the 
celebrated temple — this marble statue on which I 
stand ; though I do not see that there is anything so 
very wonderful about it ; it looks to me very much like 
the figure of a man. Poor fly, so it does ; but if you 
could only see the temple itself! 

Of all theologians Calvin is perhaps the least imag- 
inative. Dwelling on the shores of that most beautiful 
of lakes, beneath the shadows of the Jura and in full 
view of the snowy summit of Mont Blanc, neither the 
grandeur nor the beauty of nature seems to have 
touched any corresponding chord in his bosom. We 
find in his pages no allusions to external nature, no 
illustrations borrowed from the magnificent scenes 
around him. With Luther it is quite otherwise. He 
has a poet's heart in his bosom, and, with a poet's 
sensitive nature and quick eye for the beautiful, re- 

1 See note at the end of this Article. 



PROVINCE OF IMAGINATION IN SACRED ORATORY. 203 

sponds at once to whatever is fitted to awaken aesthetic 
emotion. The system of the former stands like the 
rocky cliffs of Sinai in the desert, grand in outline and 
stahle in its eternal foundations, but frowning and 
sterile. That of the latter, while not less lofty and 
profound, is clothed with verdure and vocal with songs. 

The complete theologian would be one who should 
unite in himself many and various qualities. He must 
be many men in one — logician, metaphysician, psy- 
chologist, linguist, student of law, student of natural 
science, student of history, student of men and manners. 
These he must be, and, not least of all, there must be 
in him something of that ideal power which inspires 
the poet and the artist, and which elevates the mind to 
its highest and purest quality of action. Augustine, 
with that beautiful simplicity which characterizes his 
Confessions, makes penitent admission of the fact that 
in his youthful days he found more delight in the 
Aeneid of Yirgil, than in the multiplication table — a 
sin, if it be one, in which, I doubt not, many of us 
have participated. " ' One and one, two ' ; 4 two and 
two, four ' ; this was to me a hateful singsong ; 6 the 
wooden horse lined with armed men ' and 4 the burn- 
ing of Troy, and Creusa's shade and sad similitude,' 
were the choice spectacle of my vanity." But had it 
been otherwise with the boy, we should have missed 
something that now charms us in the man — something 
of that mingled strength and grace, those bold and 
fervid utterances, those life-like delineations which 
command the listening ear of centuries, and which are 
due in no small degree to the existence and activity 
of the ideal faculty in that remarkable mind. He was 
not the worse, but the better theologian in his maturer 



204 



STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY. 



years, for that poetic sensibility which led him, when a 
boy, to weep over the sad story of the Carthagenian 
queen. 

I have mentioned certain respects in which imagina- 
tion may be of service to the preacher. If I mistake 
not, these considerations derive additional force from 
the character of the present time. Our religion, as was 
said at the outset, deals largely with the invisible and 
intangible. It looks not chiefly at the things that are 
seen and temporal ; its grand realities lie beyond the 
horizon of the present; it walks by faith, not by sight. 
It belongs to the spiritual, and not to the material and 
the sensible. But the tendency of the times is strongly 
to the opposite of this ; men believe in what they see 
and handle, and little else ; ours is an intensely prac- 
tical age. We belong to the indicative mode and 
present tense of things ; we are struggling for liberty 
and just law, fighting for national existence, digging 
for gold. The problem with us is to live ; the actual 
present fills our thoughts, and the material world is 
all the world we know or have any evidence of. In 
theory and in practice, in philosophy and science, and 
in the actual conduct of life, we are fast drifting to 
materialism. 

The great question to be settled, the great battle to 
be fought by the Christian church and ministry for the 
next half-century, is not whether this or that particular 
dogma of our ancient faith is defensible, this or that 
particular statement of Moses or some other sacred 
writer is reliable, but have we a revelation, and have 
we a God ? Is there anything beyond Nature and her 
eternal, irrevocable laws ? It is not the scepticism of 
Colenso, or even of Eenan, that is to give us the most 



PROVINCE OF IMAGINATION IN SACRED ORATORY. 205 

serious trouble, but the scepticism more insidious and 
more formidable, because more in harmony with the 
tendencies of the age — the scepticism of Comte and 
Spencer and Lewes and Mill in philosophy, and of men 
among the very chiefest in natural science. The battle 
is between the natural and the supernatural, the ma- 
terial and the spiritual. 

He who in an age so practical and material is to 
present to men for their acceptance and belief truths 
so spiritual, a religion of faith and not of sense, the 
religion of the future and the supernatural, has need 
to arm himself not only with the weapons of reason 
and a sound philosophy, but also to call to his aid that 
power by which he shall be able to seize the invisible 
and the spiritual, and make them stand forth as reali- 
ties to the awakened perceptions of his hearers. A 
bold and fervid imagination is needful for this. Plati- 
tudes and abstractions will not do. The powers of the 
world to come must take form and shape ; the hand- 
writing of impending doom must come out upon the 
wall, visible to the dullest eye. 

Here lay in no small degree the secret of Payson's 
peculiar power as a preacher, the definiteness and 
reality which his vivid imagination imparted to what- 
ever truth he would present, and the strong light in 
which it enabled him to place the realities of the in- 
visible and spiritual world before his hearers. The 
most effective pulpit orators of the present day are, 
almost without exception, men largely gifted' with this 
power. 

But why refer to other examples, when the discourses 
of him who spake as never man spake afford the richest 
illustrations of our theme ? How full of imagination 



206 



STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY. 



those discourses ; how rich and varied the imagery ; 
his very words are pictures ; he speaks to the eye of 
the hearer ; he utters the most profound truths, but, 
clothed in the forms of sensible representation, they 
become, like himself, incarnate. He teaches not so 
much by argument as by metaphor and illustration. 
His sermons are parables, and a parable is a little 
poem. If called upon to specify the one distinctive 
feature of our Saviour's discourses, I should name this 
— the predominance of the ideal element. When he 
would inculcate the lesson of reliance on Divine Provi- 
dence, he reminds us of the lilies, which toil not, 
neither do they spin, and of the sparrows that fall not 
without our Heavenly Father's notice. When he would 
teach us of how little moment are the distinctions of 
earthly rank and condition, he shows us the rich man 
in his palace and the beggar lying at the gate ; then, 
presently, that beggar in Abraham's bosom, and that 
rich man calling in vain for a drop of water to cool his 
tongue. When he would teach us to be doers of the 
word, and not hearers only, he builds a house upon 
the sand, and the rains descend, the winds blow, and 
the floods beat upon that house, and it falls, and great 
is the fall of it. In his vivid presentation, the future 
suffering of the ungodly takes shape and realization 
under the figure of the worm that dieth not, and the 
fire that is not quenched. To express the lesson of 
unreserved consecration, he does not say, My disciples 
must make my service paramount to all other consid- 
erations, but " He that cometh after me, and liateth 
not father and mother and sister and brother, yea, and 
his own life also, cannot be my disciple." So vivid 
and intense become even the most abstract and uni- 



PROVINCE OF IMAGINATION IN SACRED ORATORY. 207 

versal truths when brought under the burning glass of 
his fervid imagination. It toucheth the mountains, 
and they smoke. 

He who in this most pragmatic, unbelieving age 
would seize the truths of the invisible and spiritual 
world, and make them stand forth as realities to the 
apprehension of men, has need in no small degree of 
this same faculty which characterizes so remarkably 
the discourses of the Great Teacher, and which imparts 
to them at once so much of beauty and of power. 

What was said of the theologian is even more true 
of the preacher, who is the theologian in the pulpit. 
He has need to be many men in one ; he has occasion 
for qualities and powers the most diverse ; he must 
discard no one of the faculties which God and Nature 
have given him ; he needs them all. Least of all, 
perhaps, can he afTord to dispense with that of which I 
have been speaking. He must draw his illustrations 
from all surrounding objects, and each passing event 
must be made tributary to his purpose. From nature, 
from art, from science, from the living world as it 
surges around him, from the heavens above, and from 
the earth beneath, and from the waters under the 
earth, must he seize and press into his service what- 
ever can illustrate, whatever can enforce or adorn. 
As the fabled Orpheus, by the sweet touches of his lyre, 
drew the wild beasts of the forest and even inanimate 
objects around him at his pleasure, so must the Chris- 
tian orator, by the power of his imagination, be able to 
command the presence and service of things animate 
and inanimate, visible and invisible, in the onward 
march and progress of his thought. Not rocks and 
trees and wild beasts alone, but angelic and sr 'Hial 



208 



STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY. 



forms must come at his call — beings that "walk the 
earth unseen, both when we awake and when we 
sleep." As the prophet of Israel touched the eyes of 
his servant, and showed him the mountains round 
about him filled with angelic warriors and chariots of 
fire, so must he who speaks for God to this unbelieving 
world be able to draw aside at times the thin veil that 
hides the invisible, and show his astonished hearers the 
dread realities that lie so near to every one of us. As 
in the contest of Greek and Trojan story, over the em- 
battled hosts upon the plain the gods themselves were 
fighting for and against the mortal combatants below, 
so must the dull worshipper of mammon and of sense, 
as he comes to the house of God, be made to see that 
the very air above him and around him is full of armed 
warriors in fierce contest over a prostrate soul — and 
that soul his own I 



PROVINCE OF IMAGINATION IN SACRED ORATORY. 209 



NOTE. 



Note. — Page 202. 

In this connection how just and how forcible the remarks of Elli- 
cott, himself one of the most severely critical of modern biblical 
commentators, in the preface to the first edition of his Commentary 
on the Pastoral Epistles. 

u Let us never forget that there is such a thing as the analogy of 
Scripture ; that it is one thing generally to unfold the meaning of an 
individual passage, and another to do so consistently with the gen- 
eral principles and teaching of Scripture. The first may often be 
done with plausible success by means of acuteness, observation, and 
happy intuitions ; the second, independently of higher aids, is only 
compatible with some knowledge of dogmatical theology, and some 
acquaintance with those masterpieces of sacred learning which were 
the glory of the seventeenth century. 

" By the aid of these references I do venture to think that the 
student may acquire vast stores both of historical and dogmatical 
theology, and I dwell especially upon this portion of the Commen- 
tary, lest the necessarily frigid tone of the critical or grammatical 
discussions should lead any one to think that I am indifferent to 
what is infinitely higher and nobler. To expound the life-giving 
word coldly and bleakly, without supplying some hints of its eter- 
nal consolations, without pointing to some of its transcendent per- 
fections, its inviolable truths, and its inscrutable mysteries, thus to 
wander with closed eyes through the paradise of God, is to forget 
the expositor's highest duty, and to leave undone the noblest and 
most sanctifying work to which human learning could presume to 
address itself." 

14 



V. 



THE IDEAL AND THE ACTUAL. 

There are two worlds in which we live — the ideal 
and the actual ; even as there are two natures per- 
taining to us — the material and the spiritual. The 
one is the solid, tangible, actual world of things which 
exist at this present time in space, and have their 
dimensions, and can be measured and handled and 
numbered and described — world of actual existences 
and actual events. The other is the world of thought, 
conception, fancy — world of things that exist and 
events that take place only as our own busy brain 
creates them — picture-world, dream-world, thought- 
world, world of the possible, the ideal, as the other is 
world of the actual. 

Passing for the present the question which of these 
two worlds is the more important, or even the more 
real, it is sufficient here to say that there is in our very 
nature and constitution provision made for the ideal no 
less than for the actual ; each is a phase and element of 
our being, legitimately so, and by nature. Along with 
the capacity for the actual — the worlds of forms and 
bodies, and movements in space and events in time — 
there is in every mind a native tendency, more or less 
manifest, to step over the bounds of the actual into the 
realm of the ideal, the silent fairy-land of thought and 

i An Address delivered before the Porter Rhetorical Society at Andover, 
and at other literary institutions, 
210 



THE IDEAL AND THE ACTUAL. 



211 



fancy. In proportion as the one or the other of these 
elements predominates in any mind, yon have, in the 
one case, the man of fact, pragmatic, working ever 
upon the material forms and forces that surround him, 
measuring, weighing, observing, recording, searching 
ever after the what is or what was, content if he may 
know that, with never a doubt in his mind of the 
supreme reality and importance of those facts and 
actualities which fill the measure of his thought and 
his endeavor; in the other case, the man of lively fancy 
and manifold imaginings, caring not so much for the 
what is or the what ivas as for the what might be, dwell- 
ing more or less in a world of his own creation, and 
investing even the common, dull realities of actual life 
with the varied hues of his own imagination. To such 
a mind nothing is absolutely dull or common-place. 

" Life, like a dome of many-colored glass, 
Stains the white radiance of eternity." 

While the tendency to the ideal is much more 
strongly developed in some minds than in others, and 
in some periods of life, perhaps, than in others, it is 
nevertheless a tendency which has its root in our very 
nature, and of which no mind is wholly destitute. Even 
the most pragmatic and matter-of-fact man is some- 
times betrayed into a fit of reverie, and, like the prophet 
of old, is caught up ere he is aware in some fire- chariot, 
and moves aloft in cloud-land, not less to his own as- 
tonishment than to that of the by-standers. Then the 
little round world sails below him, with its mountains 
and its multitudes, strangely dwindling to a point, while 
he moves aloft among the grander spheres. Deny it as 
we may, ignore it as we may, we are all by nature 



212 



STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY. 



poets — a race of dreamers, castle-builders, cloud-dwell- 
ers. You sit of an evening solitary in your apart- 
ment, in what you are pleased to call a vacant mood, 
gazing into the fire ; you see bright embers, glowing 
coals, jets of flame, and wreaths of curling smoke ; 
presently you see more than that, things take shape 
and form — faces come out, figures arrange themselves, 
castles and towers arise, mountains and seas and varied 
landscapes ; and so ere you are aware you have passed 
over from the actual to the ideal ; you are a poet now, 
dwelling for the moment in a world of your own 
creation. 

By and by you fall asleep, and what a strange ideal 
world opens before you at once. The most pragmatic 
soul becomes visionary then. You who have nothing, 
as you say, of the poet in you, who care for nothing 
but facts and solid actualities, what strange fantasies 
you are all at once executing ; the veriest wizard and 
wonder-worker never did the like. Now you are up 
among the stars, astride the shoulders of patient Orion, 
or pulling the Great Bear by the ears. You, who believe 
in nothing but the actual, are chased over what house- 
tops and mountain-tops by some fierce hobgoblin, and 
awake half dead with fright ; or it may be in your sleep 
you have been listening to some fairy strain of sweetest 
music, like that described by the poet in Comus : 

" At last a soft and solemn breathing sound 
Rose like a stream of rich distilled perfumes 
And stole upon the air, that even Silence 
Was took ere she was ware, and wished she might 
Deny her nature, and be never more 
Still, to be so displaced. I was all ear, 
And took in strains that might create a soul 
Under the ribs of death." 



THE IDEAL AND THE ACTUAL. 



213 



So strange and unreal are the fictions of the brain in 
sleep ; and yet in this same enchanted dream-land 
dwell even the most pragmatic and practical souls 
during no small portion of their earthly life. 

The tendency to the ideal is more strongly developed, 
perhaps, in childhood than in later life. The child 
lives much more than the adult in the world of fancy. 
The lines that define the two realms are not clearly 
and definitely marked to the child. The cloud that 
sails along the summer sky is with him not very clearly 
distinguished from the fairy shape which his imagina- 
tion gives it ; and whether it be really a white fleecy 
cloud, or a white-robed angel, with expanded snowy 
wing, moving silently along the deep blue, he hardly 
knows. In childhood the mind is full of fancies, and 
these are often mistaken for realities. 

A striking instance of this, and at the same time an 
illustration of the tendency of childhood to the ideal, 
occurs in the early life of that gifted but eccentric 
genius De Quincy, as narrated by himself. He is 
speaking of the deep grief he felt for the loss of a sister 
to whom he was much attached, and of the impression 
made on his mind by a portion of the church service 
in those days of childish sorrow. " It was a church on 
the old and natural model of England, having aisles, 
galleries, organs, all things ancient and venerable, and 
the proportions majestic. Here, whilst the congrega- 
tion knelt through the long litany, as often as we came 
to the passage, so beautiful amongst many that are so, 
where God is supplicated on behalf of 4 the sick persons 
and young children,' and that he would 'show his 
pity upon all prisoners and captives,' I wept in secret, 
and, raising my streaming eyes to the windows of the 



214 



STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY. 



galleries, saw, on days when the sun was shining, a 
spectacle as affecting as ever prophet can have beheld. 
The sides of the windows were rich with stained glass ; 
through the deep purples and crimsons streamed the 
golden light ; emblazonries of heavenly illumination 
mingling with the earthly emblazonries of what is 
grandest in man. There were the apostles that had 
trampled upon earth, and the glories of earth, out of 
celestial love to man. There were the martyrs, that 
had borne witness to the truth through flames, through 
torments, and through armies of fierce insulting forces. 
There were the saints, who under intolerable pangs 
had glorified God by meek submission to his will. 
And all the time, whilst this tumult of sublime memo- 
rials held on as the deep chords from an accompaniment 
in the bass, I saw, through the wide central field of the 
window, where the glass was uncolored, white, fleecy 
clouds sailing over the azure depths of the sky. Were 
it but a fragment, a hint of such a cloud, immediately, 
under the flash of. my sorrow-haunted eye, it grew and 
shaped itself into visions of beds with white lawn 
curtains ; and in the beds lay sick children — dying 
children, that were tossing in anguish, and weeping 
clamorously for death. God, for some mysterious 
reason, could not suddenly release them from their 
pain ; but he suffered the beds, as it seemed, to rise 
slowly through the clouds ; slowly the beds ascended 
into the chambers of the air ; slowly also his arms 
descended from the heavens, that he and his young 
children, whom in Judea, once and forever, he had 
blessed, — though they must pass slowly through the 
dreadful chasm of separation, — might yet meet the 
sooner. These visions were self-sustained. These visions 



THE IDEAL AND THE ACTUAL. 



215 



needed not that any sound should speak to me, or music 
mould my feelings. The hint from the litany, the frag- 
ment from the clouds — those and the storied windows 
were sufficient." 

But while there is, as I have said, a foundation laid 
in our nature for the ideal, and while we are all at 
times, even in spite of ourselves, carried over into the 
realms of fancy, there is, if I mistake not, in many 
minds a prejudice against the ideal, as somehow at 
variance with the actual and at war with common 
sense. We are an intensely practical people, an in- 
tensely earnest and active age, of vast material re- 
sources and material wants. The practical, the actual, 
lays hold of us at every step, and presses us into its 
service. Roads are to be laid across the continent, and 
rivers to be bridged, and ships to be built, and broad 
acres to be sowed and harvested, and machinery of all 
kinds to be invented and set a going, and the steam- 
whistle is screaming in our ears, and we run to and 
fro in our terribly earnest life ; and what have we to 
do with the ideal and the realms of cloud-land ? And 
so the tendency of our nature to something other and 
better than the material and the actual is repressed, 
and the yearnings of the soul for the beautiful crea- 
tions of the ideal are checked, as somehow unworthy 
of an earnest mind true to itself and its own destiny. 
It is the conscientious feeling and conviction of hiany 
persons, that the actual alone is worthy of our regard, 
while the ideal is to be banished as far as may be from 
our thoughts. " Life is real, life is earnest," they tell 
us — not to be wasted, therefore, in dreams and fancies 
and cloud-castles. These trifles are the amusements 
of children, but are not for men. 



216 



STUDIES m PHILOSOPHY. 



I am beginning to be a little sceptical as to the 
validity of this reasoning. As I get older, and am 
drawn more and more with the rapid years into the 
whirl and tumult of life, I begin to think that the ideal 
may after all have its place and its use in the world. 
I begin to wish that the days of childhood and of 
cloud-castles would come back again — the days when 
life was not so terribly earnest as now, when it was 
pleasure enough to lie all day on the cool grass beneath 
the trees, and watch the play of light and shade upon 
the green leaves gently moving and rustling with the 
breeze, and look up through them into the deep blue 
sky above, and listen to the low murmur of their 
thousand voices — days when the minnow in the brook 
and the red squirrel in the wood were watched with 
greater interest than the movements of emperors and 
the fate of kingdoms ; when a beauty and a glory 
rested on the face of earth and sky and all the glorious 
works of God, and all things had not as yet put on the 
dull and sombre hue of what men call the realities of 
life. And when sometimes those golden days do re- 
turn, and the beauty and the glory of earlier years 
light up again for a time the sober face of things, I 
begin to ask whether the ideal is after all to be dis- 
carded by the true and earnest man — whether it be 
really at variance and inconsistent with a due regard 
to the actual. Doubtless there may be such a thing as 
the undue exercise of the imagination, the excessive 
culture of the ideal, to the neglect of the sober realities 
of life. But that there is any danger of such a result, 
or any tendency to that extreme in us as a nation, and 
in this age of iron and steam, is a proposition too 
absurd to be seriously refuted. On the contrary, may 



THE IDEAL AND THE ACTUAL. 



217 



it not happen that in our eager devotion to the actual 
we shall too much overlook and undervalue the purely 
ideal, and so the higher nature that dwells within us 
become enslaved to the material world that surrounds 
and shuts us in, and calls for all our energies. 

But of what use, it will be said, is the ideal ? Yonder 
on a cliff that pushes out into the Rhine stands a lordly 
palace, with its towers and terraces ; and there, in the 
peaceful river at the foot of the cliff, lies the same 
reproduced — the precise image and picture, done in 
water, of that which is done above in stone. Here 
meet in close proximity the actual, the ideal. Let 
us test their claims. The one is useful, you say — can 
be lived in and enjoyed as a structure comfortable and 
convenient for all the purposes of life. The other is 
merely a pretty picture, of no practical value. True ; 
but, as a picture merely, is it not a thing to be ad- 
mired and enjoyed ? And after all, does it not amount 
practically to this — that both the castle in stone and 
the castle in the water contribute to enjoyment ; the 
one by furnishing shelter and commodious dwelling, 
the other by ministering to the sense of beauty. And 
so it comes simply to, this : Which contributes most to 
the enjoyment of life, the material, sensible world, 
represented by our stone castle, or the ideal world, 
represented by our image in the water? That is at 
least an open question. In fact, great part of the 
value of the real castle consists in its contrivances for 
beauty and ornament, rather than in its contrivances 
for use. Its marbles and towers and terraces and curious 
carvings and quaint devices all speak to the sense of 
beauty in the soul. They appeal to the ideal element 
of our nature. So far as this is the case, castle and 



218 



STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY 



castle-picture stand on the same ground ; neither is 
of any special use ; both contribute to enjoyment and 
the sense of the beautiful ; and the question is merely 
one of degree : Which is the more to be admired, a 
castle built of stone, or the same accurately pencilled 
in the water ? 

If now we take the question upon higher grounds, 
while we find the world of sense — the material, actual 
world — furnishing the body with food, clothing, shelter, 
warmth, and the like, furnishing the various con- 
veniences and necessities of animal life, do we not find 
the ideal — the world of thought — the realm of the 
spiritual — contributing to the wants of the mind, edu- 
cating the intellect, correcting the taste, refining the 
sensibilities, elevating and enlarging the soul, making, 
in a word, the great difference between man and man, 
not to say between man and brute ? Art does this in 
its thousand forms ; the ideal does this — the realm 
of thought and fancy. And what more or better than 
this is the use of the actual ? 

But it will be said the ideal is untrue and false. I 
am not quite so sure of that. The image pencilled in 
the water is just as real as the castle on the cliff ; only 
the one is a real castle, the other a real picture. The 
one is just as true and just as false as the other. View 
it as you will, the picture in the water is as real as the 
stone-work on the land. The ideal is not of necessity 
false ; for it professes to be nothing but what it is — 
picture-work, image-work, fancy-work ; while often the 
actual building of wood or stone professes to be what 
it is not. The rainbow is just as real as the rain-drops 
that form it and the cloud on which it is painted ; 
and yet it is but an appearance — a vision of beauiy 



THE IDEAL AND THE ACTUAL. 



219 



sketched by the glowing pencil of the sun. A thought 
is as real as a block of granite, though not so heavy. 
A fancy is as true as a fact, though by no means so 
difficult to establish. Nay, the fiction often proves 
true, while the facts, so-called, are found to be false. 
It is an old remark, and a very just one, of Aristotle, 
that poetry is truer than history. The actual matter 
of fact is difficult to be got at, and historic statements 
are therefore seldom reliable with any positive cer- 
tainty. Then, again, the actual is true once ; the 
ideal is true everywhere and always. Whether there 
was in the land of Uz an actual Job, and somewhere 
else an actual Dives, admits of question ; if so, each 
existed but once. That there have been such men as 
Job, and such men as Dives, no one can doubt. The 
world has seen a thousand such. The amount of real 
truth, then, in poem and parable, on the one hand, as 
compared with the historic statement on the other, 
is in the ratio of a thousand to one. But poetry and 
parables are of the realm of the ideal, and history 
belongs to the actual world ; and the good honest souls 
that jog on through the world with the conviction that 
all history is true, and all poetry and fiction untrue — 
that facts and figures and the actual world are alone to 
be trusted and believed in, but whatever pertains to 
the realm of the ideal to be distrusted as unreal and 
false — are about as near the truth themselves in so 
thinking as are the facts and figures which they be- 
lieve in. 

As the artist Ruskin has said of the romantic, which 
is only another phase of the ideal, " This secret and 
poetical enthusiasm in all your hearts, which as prac- 
tical men you try to restrain, is indeed one of the 



220 



STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY, 



holiest parts of your being. It is the instinctive delight 
in, and admiration for, sublimity, beauty, and virtue 
unusually manifested. And so far from being a dan- 
gerous guide, it is the truest part of your being. It 
is even truer than your consciences. A man's con- 
science may be utterly perverted and led astray ; but 
so long as the feelings of romance endure within us 
they are unerring — they are as true to what is right 
and lovely as the needle to the north. 1 

But my object in this address is not so much to 
vindicate the claims of the ideal to the regard of 
sensible and earnest men, — entering the lists as adven- 
turous knight in its defence, — but rather to point 
out the true relation which the realm of the ideal 
sustains to the realm of the actual in the world as it 
really is, thus bringing to view the important part 
which it really plays in the drama of actual life. 

1. Consider, then, for a moment the relation of the 
ideal to our knowledge of the actual. Closer than we 
may at first suppose is this relation. Let us look at it, 
for example, as regards the simple perception of external 
objects. How do we know the actual, material world 
around us ? By the senses, you reply. I touch the table ; 
I feel the chair ; I see the distant object ; and thus 
I come to know by immediate perception the actual 
material world. But how much exactly is it, after all, 
that sense gives us in this case? We feel what? A 
certain degree of extension and hardness. We see 
what ? A certain amount of light, variously figured 
and colored, coming to the eye from the distant object. 
Thus by the several senses we learn, one by one, the 
various qualities of the object — its form and figure, so 

1 Lectures on Architecture and Painting, Lecture ii. 



THE IDEAL AND THE ACTUAL. 



221 



and so ; its bulk, its weight, its color, its roughness or 
smoothness, and the like. But no one of these per- 
ceptions, as given by sense, is a complete knowledge 
of the object. It is not until we combine all these 
data of the several senses, and form a notion or con- 
ception of an object that unites in itself all these simple 
and several qualities, that we attain a true idea and 
real knowledge of the object perceived ; and this is the 
work, not of one nor of all the senses, — not of the 
senses at all, but of the intellect. Our true knowledge 
is our true idea, our correct conception, of the thing 
known. And so it seems that our access to the 
material, actual world without is only through the 
realm of the ideal. The material must first pass over 
into the realm of the ideal before it becomes really 
known to the mind. This it was, perhaps, that led to 
the theory formerly entertained, that we know really 
only our own ideas, and not external objects at all — a 
mistaken view ; and yet it is true that to know any object 
is to form a notion or idea of it, and that a correct one. 
The knowledge is the notion. 

If now we look at the manner in which we are led 
to the discovery of new and unknown truth, we shall 
perceive the close relation of the ideal to our knowledge 
of the actual. It is not too much to say that in most 
cases the ideal lies at the foundation of our discovery 
of the actual. Some lucky guess, some happy conjec- 
ture, some fortunate conception, floating at first as a 
vague idea before the mind, wholly unsubstantiated as 
yet, has led to a train of reasoning, a series of observa- 
tions, or a course of experiments, which has resulted in 
the discovery of some new and important truth. The 
astronomer, at a loss to account for the perturbations 



222 



STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY. 



of Uranus, sets himself to conjecture all possible causes ; 
enters the realm of the ideal, and calls before him from 
the land of shadows now this, now that, conception of 
the brain ; questions whether it may be so, or so ; dis- 
covers at last, dimly visible in the darkness, a possible 
solution ; pursues it through the spectral and uncertain 
regions of hypothesis, until at last it emerges into clear 
and positive evidence ; and that which was at first a 
mere conjecture takes its place as planet in the solar 
system, to be pointed at by all telescopes and put 
down in all sidereal charts. So, too, the chemist and 
the geologist conduct their investigations. They sup- 
pose this or that, make this or that conjecture, proceed 
with requisite experiments, and find that the thing is 
really so and so. In natural science, if not in all 
science, knowledge begins with hypothesis. The dis- 
coveries of Newton rest upon the previous discoveries 
of Kepler, and these, again, originate in a series of 
hypotheses. There is first, in all discovery of the un- 
known, an idea of the thing; then more or less of 
reasoning, experimenting, observing, to see if our idea 
may be the right one ; then conviction and belief ; 
by-and-by demonstration and certainty. And so again, 
as before, our path to the actual lies through the realm 
of the ideal. We pass in through the gate of shadows, 
and reach the terra firma of real truth only by ques- 
tioning the airy fancies that come thronging from 
cloud-land about our path. We get at the what is, 
only via the what may be. 

2. Consider now the relation of the ideal to the 
enjoyment of the actual — to what we may call the 
poetry of life. It cannot have escaped the dullest 
observation that much of the charm of life is derived 



THE IDEAL AND THE ACTUAL. 



223 



from this source — the power which every mind pos- 
sesses, but some in a higher degree than others, of 
investing the actual with the colors of the ideal. The 
most common objects seen through this medium be- 
come poetic, even as some unsightly rock or shrub, 
when it catches the sunset and stands all aglow with 
the splendor that is thrown around it, becomes beauti- 
ful with the borrowed light. What light and shade 
are to the hill-side and valley, such is the ideal to the 
actual of our common life. The Alps in the gray 
twilight of the morning and the Alps at sunrise are 
the same Alps, yet not the same. In the still dawn 
there rises before you a dimly denned mass, dark and 
frowning, towering aloft and losing itself in the azure 
depths. Presently you look again, and the old moun- 
tain has clothed itself with light, every line and angle, 
every jutting cliff and rocky promontory, stands clear 
and sharply denned against the sky, and the rosy 
tinge of sunrise, the ruddy blush of the morning, 
touches with a kiss the snowy summit of the Jungfrau, 
and the deep shadows lie sleeping in the valleys, and 
the actual has put on the ideal. It is thus that the 
ideal is ever lighting up the actual world. How dull 
would life be if there were nothing of this — if one 
saw all things only exactly as they are ! Much of the 
interest which we feel in the objects and scenes which 
meet our eyes from day to day, is derived from the 
color with which our own imagination invests them. 
Peculiarly is this the case with objects which possess a 
history, and gather about them the associations of a 
remote antiquity. It happened to me once to visit the 
Alte Schloss of Baden-Baden. An old dilapidated 
castle, on a commanding eminence, far away from the 



224 



STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY. 



fairy little town, embosomed in a dense forest, the 
old walls crumbling by age, and deserted by every 
living thing, it stands there in its solitude and its decay, 
looking out still from its turrets and battlements on 
the valley below and on the distant Rhine, even as it 
has stood looking for centuries. As I stood upon its 
walls, surveying the wide and regal prospect, suddenly 
a low sweet strain, as of a lyre, came floating upon the 
air, and filled the silent ruins with a wild, unearthly 
melody, now rising, now falling, with the cadences of 
the wind. It was but a simple thing in itself; but 
what a train of associations and thick-coming fancies 
did it call up. The old castle was a ruin no longer. 
Knights in armor and mailed warriors came riding in 
at the gates ; the bugle was sounding from the warder's 
tower ; there was the clang of arms and neighing and 
champing of impatient steeds in the castle-yard ; ladies 
fair looked out at the balconies, and prisoners were 
sighing in the dungeon keep. 

What a charm invests the scenery and soil of Italy ! 
It is not merely that the skies are blue and the air full 
of dreamy beauty, and a mellow radiance invests the 
distant objects ; but it is the thought of the past — the 
great and solemn history that broods like an ever- 
present spirit over the land, and of which even external 
nature seems to be conscious ; the associations con- 
nected with every river and plain and mountain and 
lake ; in a word, it is the ideal lifting up the actual. 
Through this gorge defiled the troops of Caesar. From 
this spot Cicero was wont to look out over the bay of 
Naples, and yonder is the tomb of Virgil. From the 
moment he sets foot on classic soil the traveller moves 
in an ideal land. He sees not the Italy that is. but 
the Italy that was. 



THE IDEAL AND THE ACTUAL. 



225 



But why do I wander to other lands, when we have 
an illustration close at hand. Our national flag — 
what is it in reality but a few yards of striped cloth 
ornamented with a few stars ? But as it rolls out to 
the breeze to-day from roof and spire and mast-head, 
as it floats aloft over our national fortresses, our public 
buildings, and our ships-of-war, has it not a meaning 
and a language and a soul ? Speaks it not to millions 
of beating hearts the words of patriotism ? Gathers it 
not within its ample folds the whole history and honor 
and glory of our land ? As amid the smoke of battle 
the eye of the soldier, faint and wounded, catches a 
glimpse of the old flag waving above him, how does it 
inspire hiin with new ardor to strike yet another blow 
for the dear old fatherland. 

3. The relation of the ideal to the actual may be 
still further apparent if we consider the connection 
between the former and the domain of art. The 
realm of art is the realm of the ideal. There is its 
home, its dwelling, and its birth-place. Whatever form 
it may assume, whether it comes to us as painting 
or poetry or music or sculpture or eloquence, whether 
its object be to please or to persuade, to arouse the 
passions or allay them, to convince the judgment or 
please the eye or charm the taste, it is to the ideal ele- 
ment of our nature that it makes its appeal ; and it is 
here alone that we detect the secret of its power over 
us. There is no greater mistake in aesthetics than to 
suppose that art is merely descriptive of nature — that 
its province is merely to give us a fair and true copy 
of what it sees ready at hand. Art is not mere imita- 
tion of the actual. True art, high art, is always 
creative, aims at something better than the actual, is 

15 



226 



STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY. 



not satisfied with mere reproduction. Hence the poet, 
the painter, the sculptor, the composer, are dreamy 
men and visionary men ; they dwell much in the ideal ; 
fancies are realities to them, and cloud-land is their 
home ; visions of things unseen by other eyes float 
before them ; they hear what others hear not. The 
best likeness extant of Beethoven represents him as a 
man wrapt in reverie, as if he were listening to some 
strain of celestial melody that came floating down from 
the heavens above him. You would think him one of 
the ancient prophets in the moment of ecstatic vision. 

I have said that it is the province of art in its highest 
forms to give the ideal rather than to reproduce the 
actual. This may be shown by reference to the works 
which please us most and are of the highest order of 
excellence. We never find them exact copies of any 
original. The original lay in the chambers of the 
artist's brain. It is something which he saw in cloud- 
land. Take the best passages of the best poets, — for 
we cannot so conveniently refer to other departments 
of art, — and you will find their life and power and 
charm to be in this, the predominance of the ideal over 
the actual. When Homer describes the descent of 
Apollo, in the well-known line, 

6 8 rjU WKTL €Ol/«OS 

(He came like night), 

and when, describing the battle by the sea-side, he 
speaks of " the dreadful roar of men," we have in either 
case an instance of the ideal. What has Shakespeare 
written, of its kind, that is finer than the song of Ariel 
in " The Tempest" ; yet what can be more purely ideal ? 
Indeed, the genius of Shakespeare shows itself in nothing 



THE IDEAL AND THE ACTUAL. 



227 



more than in his fairies, which are purely his own 
creations. What can be wilder, and stranger, and more 
purely ideal, than that scene of the witches in " Mac- 
beth " ? Or, again, the following, from the " Mid- 
summer Night's Dream " : 

" My gentle Puck, come hither. Thou rememberest 
Since once I sat upon a promontory, 
And heard a mermaid on a dolphin's back 
Uttering such dulcet and harmonious breath 
That the rude sea grew civil at her song, 
And certain stars shot madly from their spheres 
To hear the sea-maid's music." 

Our matter-of-fact man must go far and look long to 
find the exact original of that. A mermaid sitting on 
the back of a dolphin, and singing so sweetly as to 
charm the sea and draw the stars from their spheres, 
has never been seen, I believe, by any of our scientific 
expeditions ; and if our matter-of-fact man should 
therefore pronounce the whole passage untrue, I must 
admit that it is, to say the least, highly colored. 
When Milton beholds 

" The wandering moon 
Riding near her highest noon. 
Like one that hath been led astray 
Through the heaven's wide, pathless way ; 
And oft, as if her head she bowed, 
Stooping through a fleecy cloud" 

and when a modern poet speaks of her as fleeing 
through the sky, 

" Pursued by all the dark and hungry clouds," 

we recognize at once the presence of something more 
than the actual. 

So in the following : 



228 



STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY. 



" Down comes the frantic rain. 
We hear the wail of the remorseful winds, 
In their strange penance. And this wretched orb 
Knows not the taste of rest ; a maniac world, 
Homeless and sobbing through the deep she goes." 

In all ascriptions of the feelings, the fears, the passions 
of humanity to inanimate nature, than which nothing 
is more common in poetry, we have of course the purely 
ideal, and not at all the actual. 

We read, again, in a modern author, that 

" When the heart-sick earth 
Turns her broad back upon the gaudy sun, 
And stoops her weary forehead to the night 
To struggle with her sorrow all alone, 
The moon, that patient sufferer, pale with pain, 
Presses her cold lips on her sister's brow 
Till she is calm." 

We are touched with the. exquisite pathos of the senti- 
ment ; but how entirely would it destroy the charm 
which is thrown over us by such a passage to so much 
as raise the question whether the statement here made 
is strictly correct. Astronomers have complained of 
the eccentricities of the moon ; but I am not aware that 
they have ever detected in her various movements any 
tendency to osculation. 

One of the finest passages descriptive of natural 
scenery is Shelley's description of the chasm and the 
overhanging rock ; yet mark how in this the ideal 
shines through the actual, and pervades it as with a 
living soul. 

" I remember, 
Two miles on this side of the fort, the road 
Crosses a deep ravine ; 't is rough and narrow, 
And winds with short turns down the precipice ; 



THE IDEAL AND THE ACTUAL. 



229 



And in its depth there is a mighty rock 
"Which has for unimaginable years 
Sustained itself, with terror and with toil, 
Over a gulf, and with the agony 
"With which it clings seems slowly coming down ; 
Even as a wretched soul, hour after hour, 
Clings to the mass of life, yet clinging, leans, 
And leaning, makes more dark the dread abyss 
In which it fears to fall. Beneath this crag, 
Huge as despair, as if in weariness, 
The melancholy mountain yawns. Below 
You hear, but see not, an impetuous torrent 
Raging among the caverns." 

I must not multiply examples ; but how purely ideal 
the exquisite description of the approach of evening, by 
James B. Read. 

" Robed like an abbess 

The snowy earth lies, 
"While the red sun-down 

Fades out of the skies ; 
Up walks the evening, 

Veiled like a nun, 
Telling her starry beads 

One by one." 

4.. But our discussion of the subject would be quite 
incomplete if we were to overlook the relation of the 
ideal to self-culture. For what and where were all 
attempts at self-culture, were it not for the thought, 
ever before the mind, of something better and nobler 
than we are — the conception of the higher. This it is 
that incites us to effort, that stimulates us when weary, 
and reproves us when indolent, presenting ever to the 
mind a standard not yet attained, a goal not yet reached. 
This is the aliquid immensum infinitumque of which 
Cicero speaks. And this is the ideal. As the orator, 



230 



STUDIES IX PHILOSOPHY. 



in his most adventurous and successful efforts, is con- 
scious of a power and a success, in the art of moving 
and persuading men, which he has noj; yet reached ; as 
the painter, in his most inspired moments, sees a beauty 
higher and more glorious than any art of his can catch, 
any skill of his portray ; as the musician, listening 
with the ear of the soul, hears ever some strain, floating 
in the air and filling the heavens above him, sweeter 
than ever human art or human instrument has yet 
expressed ; so before the true and earnest man in any 
and all pursuit and attainment there moves ever the 
idea of an excellence not yet reached — of a character 
more faultless, an aim more pure* and lofty, a mind 
more clear in its vision and stronger in its grasp, a heart 
truer to the right, a purpose and a strength more pre- 
vailing, a peace and a joy more permanent. On this 
he fixes his eye, and toward this he ever moves. As 
before the advancing hosts of Constantine moved the 
image of the cross, with the inspiring motto Hoc vince, 
so before the true man moves the image of his possible 
self. It is the pledge of success, the signal and har- 
binger of victory. Were it not for this ideal, had we 
no conception of anything higher and better than we 
have yet attained, where were all progress ; where all 
possibility of improvement ? 

It may be too much to say that our success is usually 
in proportion to the loftiness of our ideal ; but not too 
much to say that he who has not before his mind a 
high ideal of what he may and ought to be, and attain, 
will never rise to eminence in any pursuit or calling. 
He will rest content with present acquisitions, and 
present success, and present strength, and think himself 
already at the summit when he has but begun the 



THE IDEAL AXD THE ACTUAL. 



231 



steep ascent. As in the old Platonic philosophy the 
ideas of all actual and all possible existence lay from 
eternity in the Divine mind, according to which ideas, 
as types, the universe of actual things was formed, so 
may it with truth be said that in our own minds lie the 
types of our own being and destiny, and that we are ever 
forming and fashioning our actual selves according to 
the ideas we have ourselves formed of what we might 
be if we would, and what we would be if we could. 

It is the consciousness of failure thus far to reach 
this ideal of what we have ourselves marked out as 
altogether possible and desirable for us that constitutes 
one. of the saddest reflections on the review of past life. 
So much less attained, so much less accomplished, 
than we once expected to attain, and are sure -we 
might and ought to have accomplished. 

In the watches of the night, when deep sleep falleth 
upon men, from the land of shadows and of dreams — 
the cloud-land of the mind's own fancies — a beautiful 
vision sometimes passes before you. Sorrowful and 
silent it stands by your bedside, and you discern the 
form thereof. It is the image of yourself, yet not 
yourself — not the being that you are, but the being 
that you might have been, and once thought you 
should be — your other, your ideal self. And you 
never behold that vision but with tears. 

And will the ideal never become the actual ? Are 
we doomed to be ever thus disappointed — to move 
toward a mark which recedes as we % advance — to have 
ever before us the idea and image of an excellence 
which we are never to attain ? This I will not say. 
And yet it is true that, progress as we may, there will still 
be something before us yet unattained. Our I nzon 



232 



STUDIES EN PHILOSOPHY. 



widens as we advance. There is in every soul a long- 
ing for that which is higher and better than anything 
yet realized. The ideal is ever in advance of the real. 

Once, and once only, has it been otherwise ; once, 
and only once, has the loftiest ideal that man can form 
of moral excellence passed over into the actual and 
become historic verity. It was ages ago. There came 
among men One -whom they knew not. Xo guile was 
in his heart ; no deceit vras on his lips. Wonderful 
were his words, his deeds not less wonderful. His 
whole life was love. His mission was to bless and to 
save. The sick and sorrowing felt his touch, and the 
maladies of life were healed, and the ills of life for- 
gotten. The children of affliction, the weary and the 
hea-vy-laden found rest as they listened to his reviving 
words. Xo character, no life, was ever like that. Men 
said he was a God. But could that be ? Will God in 
very deed dwell on the earth, and become man ? "VTas 
the voice that soothed the weeping Magdalen the same 
that once said, " Let there be light " ? Was the hand 
that touched and blessed the little children the same 
that set up of old the pillars of the firmament, and 
hung the curtains of the morning ? 

And so men knew him not. " He came unto his 
own, and his own received him not." And so, all 
unknown and unacknowledged, he went forth bearing 
his cross. On that imperial shoulder rested the burden 
of no ordinary woe. On that pure and loving heart 
pressed the weight of a heavier sorrow than man has 
ever known. To the many crowns that were of right 
upon that royal brow was added one that human hands 
had wrought — the crown of thorns. And so came, and 
so departed from the earth, the loftiest ideal of what 
man should be that the world has ever seen. 



THE IDEAL AND THE ACTUAL. 



233 



6. If I mistake not there is yet another, perhaps a 
higher relation of the ideal to the actual. If we were 
asked to which of the two worlds, that of conception or 
that of sense, the ideal or the actual, belongs that princi- 
ple of the spiritual life which we call faith, there can be 
but one answer. Faith is of the nature and the realm 
of the ideal. It is to sense and the objects of sense what 
the ideal is to the actual. It is a principle that has to 
do with the unseen and the abiding. It is the clear 
and vivid conception by the mind of that which now we 
see not, a full conviction of its reality and certainty, so 
that it is to us as though we saw it, and we can repose 
with entire confidence upon that conviction, and govern 
our conduct accordingly. The objects of faith are real- 
ities, but they are a class of realities that pertain not 
to the realm of the actual as it lies about us, but of the 
ideal ; realities that come to us not through the avenues 
of the material and sensible, but through the lofty gates 
of the spiritual that open outward upon the great and 
solemn future. Faith is the ideal carried over into the 
sphere of the real and eternal, the ideal playing beyond 
the bounds of time, and the narrow horizon of our little 
life, into the great firmament of truth that lies beyond 
and above. As the coruscations of the south flash 
upward toward the zenith, so faith is the ideal in man 
shooting upward toward the centre and the eternal 
throne. And thus imagination and faith are of kindred 
nature, and of common origin. A sanctified imagina- 
tion and Christian faith are sister angels that walk hand 
in hand through the world. Inspiration, addressing the 
ideal in us, speaks of the beautiful palace of the blest, 
whose gates are pearls, and whose w r alls are precious 
stones, with its river clear as crystal, and its sea of 



234 



STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY. 



glass. Inspiration hears and straightway pictures to 
us this splendid conception. Faith hears and believes, 
and straightway makes this conception a reality to us, 
and we thenceforth move on in life looking for a city 
that hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God. 
And sometimes in the hour of sorrow and bereavement, 
when the heart is desolate and the world is full of sol- 
itude, and the eye is dim with tears, comes the angel 
faith and touches the sorrowing eye, and the gates of 
the unseen open, and there rises before us the beautiful 
vision seen by him of Patmos, that sacred temple into 
which shall enter nothing that defileth ; and the re- 
deemed of God are there ; and white-robed forms move 
in glad triumphal procession, conquerors of earth and 
sin ; and among them we behold sainted ones whom we 
love, and by their side walk little ones whom also we 
recognize ; they too clothed in white, for of such is the 
kingdom of heaven ; and as they move, we hear the dis- 
tant notes of their song of praise to him that loved 
them, and washed them from their sins in his own blood. 
And having once beheld those things we are no longer 
desolate, no longer solitary and sad, but take our places 
again as pilgrims in the ranks of life, believing that 
there remaineth a rest for the people of God. 

And here we must leave a theme already I fear too 
long discussed. We have glanced at some of the rela- 
tions of the ideal to the actual. Beginning with the 
lower we have thus insensibly been led along to the 
higher ; and yet these are but a few of the lower and 
nearer aspects of a theme which, as we leave it, still 
seems to stretch away beyond us, and like the vision of 
the sleeper on the plain, invites us up its golden rounds 
to higher places and the company of angels. 



PART II. 
STUDIES IN THEOLOGY. 



STUDIES IN THEOLOGY. 



I. 

NATURAL THEOLOGY. 1 

If theology is the science of religion, natural theology 
is the science of natural religion, and should not be 
confounded, therefore, with natural religion itself. The 
question is not whether in fact there is a God, but 
how do we know that there is one, what is the evidence 
that there is one, and how shall that evidence be best 
drawn out and presented ; not whether there is in man 
an idea and belief of a Supreme Being, — an idea and 
belief sufficient to control his conduct, — nor whence 
he derives that idea, but simply, what is the logical 
value of it. This palpable distinction between natural 
religion and natural theology has not, indeed, always 
been kept in view by theological writers, yet is mani- 
festly of importance. 

If the definition now given be a correct one, natural 
theology, regarded as a science, lies evidently at the 
foundation, and constitutes the firm basis, of all other 
theological science. As in religion everything rests 
upon the conviction in the mind that there is a God, 
so in theology, in like manner, everything rests upon 
the certainty, the clear and decisive evidence that there 

1 From the Bibliotheca Sacra, Vol. vi. No. 4. November, 1849. 

237 



238 



STUDIES IN THEOLOGY. 



is such a being. This evidence it is the appropriate 
work and province of natural theology to set forth and 
arrange. Till this be done, nothing can be accom- 
plished in theology. The science of revealed religion 
does not include this, any more than the superstructure 
includes the foundation on which it is built. Revela- 
tion implies a revealer ; it must first be known, then, 
that there is a being to reveal, before it can be known 
that anything is revealed. Until natural theology has 
done its work all other theology is impossible. 

Nor does revelation come in to aid and assist us in 
this work. Revelation is out of place, cannot be ap- 
pealed to as authority, until natural theology has first 
established this primary truth, that, besides and beyond 
man, there is a being capable of revealing himself and 
eternal truth to man. 

Manifestly, then, it is of the highest importance that 
a science which lies thus at the foundation of all 
other theological truth should be well and thoroughly 
wrought, and carefully adjusted to its true position. 
There should be no flaw in the arguments. No part 
of the work should be slightly done. It should not be 
left to the enemies of truth to make the first discov- 
ery of any existing defect or weakness in the processes 
of our reasoning. In this matter the friends of truth 
have more at stake than its enemies. He who points 
out a defect, or suggests an improvement, in the method 
of stating or defending that truth, should be regarded, 
not as a foe, but as a friend to the cause. 

Yet, strange as it may seem, no department of 
theology, perhaps, has been left in so unfinished a state 
as this ; none stands in greater need of what military 
men term inspection. The work has been wrought 



NATURAL THEOLOGY. 



239 



upon by diverse minds, in different ages, and in diverse 
methods. Each in his own way has wrought. Some 
of the laborers have been truly sons of might, men of 
lofty and noble powers. But how well the diverse 
parts of the structure are fitted to each other, what are 
the strong and what the weak points in the line of 
defences, how and where it can most readily be assailed 
— these are, to say the least, open questions. 

What we propose in the present essay is to take a 
general survey of this department of theological science, 
with a view of ascertaining, if possible, the comparative 
strength and value of the different arguments generally 
relied upon to establish the cardinal doctrine of the 
divine existence. 

For this purpose some method of classification be- 
comes necessary. It has been common to arrange the 
various arguments in natural theology under the gene- 
ral methods a priori, and a posteriori. It admits of 
question, however, whether, strictly speaking, there is 
any such thing as a priori reasoning on this subject ; 
any such thing as reasoning from some high and abstract 
truth downward to the existence of a Supreme Being ; 
whether, in fact, all arguments for that existence must 
not and do not have some starting-point, some ttov 
(ttco, in the world of effect. 

Take, for instance, the argument of Clark, usually 
pronounced one of the finest specimens of this method 
of reasoning. The starting-point in this instance is 
that something exists; from which it is, by a logical 
process, inferred that something has always existed — 
something uncaused, independent, the first cause of 
all other existence. The whole argument goes to 
show that this something which now exists is in reality 



240 



STUDIES IN THEOLOGY. 



an effect, and requires a cause. It cannot therefore 
with propriety be termed a priori reasoning, since it 
does not proceed from cause to effect, but, on the con- 
trary, from effect to cause. 

The celebrated argument of Descartes, derived from 
the idea of God in the human mind, is another instance 
of what has been usually called the a priori method. 
The substance of the argument is that there could not 
be this idea of a Supreme Being in the human mind, un- 
less there were a corresponding being, the type and origi- 
nator of the idea ; in other words, this idea of God which 
man has is an effect, which requires God as its cause. Is 
this reasoning from cause to effect, or the reverse ? 

Presuming, then, that there is, strictly speaking, only 
one general method of procedure in conducting the 
argument for the divine existence, viz. the a posteriori, 
it becomes evident that what we have to do is precisely 
this : to bring forward, from whatever source, something 
which can be shown to be an effect, and then to show, 
moreover, that for the existence of this effect there is 
and must be not simply a cause, but such a cause as 
corresponds to our idea of God. The effect must be 
such as to require for its production all that which we 
include under the term God. For it is evident that, 
in reasoning from effect to cause, we can infer no more 
in the cause than is sufficient to account for the effect. 
This principle has been strangely overlooked, however, 
by many writers. They have set out with a definite 
idea in their own minds of what God is, and having 
demonstrated, as they suppose, the existence of an effect, 
and so of a cause, they conclude that they have also 
demonstrated the existence of the being whom they 
call God, without pausing to inquire whether the effect 



NATURAL THEOLOGY. 



241 



in question is of such a nature as to require for its 
production just that sort of cause which they have in 
mind, and which they thus designate. The truth is, 
we are dependent on the effect for all our positive 
knowledge of the cause ; not simply that it is, but what 
it is — not simply that there is a God, but what sort of 
a being God is. The cause may be more than com- 
mensurate with the effect — adequate to the production 
of effects vastly beyond this which we observe ; but we 
do not know that it is so, have no evidence of that, and 
therefore no certainty of it. What we have to do, 
then, in natural theology is, first to find something 
which can be clearly shown to be an effect, and then 
to show, furthermore, that it is such an effect as requires 
for its production, not a cause, merely, but the cause 
whose existence we wish to establish and which we call 
God. 

The arguments on which different theological writers 
have placed reliance are manifold and diverse ; yet 
they admit of being reduced to several classes, or lead- 
ing divisions, according to the sources from which they 
are derived. 

There is, first, the argument from the simple existence 
of matter; the ground-work and simple premise of which 
is this proposition, " something is." 

There is next the argument from the properties and 
relations of matter — not merely something is, but 
something is so and so. The argument from design, 
commonly so called, falls under this division. 

Both the methods now indicated relate to the ex- 
ternal world, things without. They are the arguments 
on which English and American theologians have 
hitherto placed their chief reliance, and with which they 

16 



242 



STUDIES IN THEOLOGY. 



have principally concerned themselves. But arguments 
which others have deemed at least of equal strength 
and importance have been drawn from the world within. 
Of this sort is the method of reasoning from the idea of 
God which exists in man ; in other words, from the 
nature and operation of the human mind. 

Then, deeper and beyond this, in the inner world, 
there is the moral nature and constitution of man, 
which also furnishes an argument for the divine exis- 
tence. These four comprise, it is believed, the various 
arguments which have been generally relied on to 
prove the existence of the Supreme Being. 

I. The argument from the existence of matter claims 
our first attention. It may be thus expressed. Some- 
thing exists, therefore something must always have 
existed ; either the things which now are, or else some 
other and superior being, capable of producing them. 
But the things which now are, the present system and 
universe of things, lying about us, subject to our ob- 
servation, of which we form a part, this cannot have 
been in existence from eternity ; is not independent, self- 
existent, and uncaused. Therefore some other being is 
so, and is the first cause and author of these things. 

This has been regarded by many as one of the 
strongest arguments which it is possible to frame in 
proof of the existence of a first cause. Reduced to the 
syllogistic form, it would read thus : 1 

First Syllogism. 

1. Whatever exists must either have eternally existed, 
or have begun to exist. 

2. But matter has not existed eternally. 

3. Therefore matter began to exist. 

1 See note (A.) at the end of this Article. 



NATURAL THEOLOGY. 



243 



Second Syllogism. 

1. But whatever begins to exist has some cause of 
beginning. 

2. Matter began to exist. 

3. Therefore matter has some cause of its existence, 
in other words, a producer or creator. 

It is evident, now, at a glance on what portion of 
the argument the burden of proof mainly fall's. In 
either syllogism, the major premise is obviously true — 
self-evident ; it is the minor alone that requires proof. 
To show that the present system of things is not eternal, 
that it had a beginning, hie opus, hoc labor est. Unless 
this can be clearly and certainly established, the whole 
argument falls. You have not shown an effect, and 
cannot therefore demand a cause. Now this is pre- 
cisely the point which it is most difficult to establish, 
and which, nevertheless, seems to have been compara- 
tively overlooked, and hastily passed over, by many 
writers not sufficiently aware of its importance and 
difficulty. It is manifestly not so much the existence, 
as the begun existence, of matter, that concerns us in 
the present argument. 

And how is this to be proved ? For in an argument 
of this sort we are not to take a mere impression, a 
conviction of the mind, however firm, as a sufficient 
basis of reasoning, but to demand clear and conclusive 
evidence. What, then, is the evidence that the present 
system of things, or that matter in general, began to 
exist, and is not from eternity ? 

Various have been the methods by which different 
writers have attemped to establish this. Prominent 
among them are these two : 1. The present system of 



244 



STUDIES IN THEOLOGY. 



things cannot be eternal, because it is composed of suc- 
cessive and finite parts. Generation succeeds generation, 
plant succeeds plant, man follows man, and so on in 
constant series and progression. Each part being finite, 
the whole cannot be infinite. 2. It cannot be eternal, 
because it admits of change, which is inconsistent with 
absolute and necessary existence. 

The first of these arguments proceeds on the suppo- 
sition that an infinite whole cannot" be composed of a 
series of parts each of which is finite ; in other words, 
that an infinite series of finite parts is impossible. 
This has been called a self-evident proposition. It may- 
be fairly questioned, however, whether the evidence 
of its truth lies so fully obvious as to merit that high 
claim. Can we not conceive of extension or of dura- 
tion infinitely protracted through successive periods, 
each of which is finite, yet, because they are infinite in 
series, making an infinite whole. If the successive 
periods or parts, though finite, are without number, so 
that you cannot fix your thoughts upon any one of 
them, and say this is the first, or that is the last, is not 
the series in that case infinite ? Indeed, what other 
idea can any man form of the existence of God than 
this, of a being existing from eternity in successive 
periods of conscious duration. " An eternal now" 
however bold and sublime as a figure of poetic diction, 
yet, strictly interpreted, is an expression to which it is 
utterly impossible for the human mind, constituted as 
it is, to attach any clear and intelligible idea, for the 
simple reason that if it means anything, it means that 
which to us can never be true, but only a contradic- 
tion in terms. We might safely challenge any man to 
form in his own mind a distinct idea of the existence 



NATURAL THEOLOGY. 



245 



of a conscious intelligent being, from which idea and 
from whose existence all succession of thought, feeling, 
and event shall be entirely excluded. 

Does the finiteness of the parts destroy the infinity 
of the whole ? Let us apply this to the divine exis- 
tence. If there be a God, the first cause and producer 
of all things, he must have existed before he created. 
Creation is an event, has a date, a beginning, previous 
to which the Deity existed alone. We. may in our 
thoughts, then, divide the duration of the Deity into 
these two parts, in the first of which he dwells alone ; 
in the second, surrounded with created existence. The 
two make up the entire duration of the Deity ; yet 
both are finite ; for the first ends, and the other begins, 
at the moment of creation. We may, and do, then, 
without inconsistency or contradiction, conceive of 
finite parts, yet an infinite whole. It may be said that 
the duration of the Deity is in reality unbroken and 
continuous. This is admitted. But the same is also 
true of all existence so long as it continues. Succession 
of parts does not interrupt the series. The line may 
be in reality unbroken, yet in its extension may be 
carried through a succession of inches without number. 
A single human life is, from the moment of its begin- 
ning to the instant of its termination, a continuous 
existence, an unbroken thread ; yet it is no inconsis- 
tency to speak of it as composed of successive parts. 
Protract that existence, that continuous thread, in- 
finitely in either direction, and you have an infinite 
series of finite parts. 

Is eternal succession impossible ? Let us apply this 
also to the divine existence. It will be generally ad- 
mitted that in the divine mind there is succession of 



246 



STUDIES IN THEOLOGY. 



thought and feeling. As has been already said, we 
can form no intelligible idea of a conscious rational 
existence, which is entirely destitute of this element. 
We do not, in fact, conceive of God as cherishing 
toward the sinner repenting to-day, the same emotions 
with which he regarded the same sinner impenitent 
and obdurate yesterday. Nor do we conceive of him 
as putting forth, at one and the same instant, all voli- 
tions and all acts — as constantly creating this world, or 
constantly redeeming it, or as creating and redeeming 
it at one and the same moment. Succession of events 
enters into all our conceptions of divine agency, as 
does succession of thought and feeling into all our 
ideas of the divine existence. Unless, then, the Deity 
has existed, at some time, absolutely without thoughts, 
emotion, or volition, there has actually been an infinite 
succession of these in the divine mind. 

Of the existence of saints and angels, and in like 
manner of our own future existence, we can form no 
other idea than this of constant succession through 
endless duration. The joy, and the song, and the in- 
tellectual employment, of an angel before the throne 
to-day, is not the joy, and the song, and the range of 
thought, of that same angel as he stood before that 
throne yesterday and worshipped. And if we are our- 
selves to exist hereafter, and that endlessly, it will 
be an existence protracted through successive periods 
of duration, marked by successive events, successive 
thoughts and emotions, following each other in endless 
series and progression. In these cases, however, the 
succession though endless is not strictly infinite, since 
it is admitted to have had a beginning. Not so how- 
ever as regards the Deity. In any case we have only 



NATURAL THEOLOGY. 



247 



to make the supposition of eternal existence, and infi- 
nite succession becomes not only possible, but seems to 
follow as a sure consequence. The law of succession, 
then, cannot be relied on to prove a begun existence. 

It is not necessary, however, to demonstrate that there 
is any such thing, in fact, as infinite or eternal succes- 
sion ; but only that such a thing can without absurdity 
or contradiction be conceived to exist ; that it is not 
impossible. In either case the objection is valid and the 
argument is overthrown ; for it is claimed by those who 
advance this argument to be a plain and self-evident truth, 
that such a thing as infinite succession is impossible. 

A new element, however, is introduced into the dis- 
cussion, when we conceive of the series as composed 
not merely of successive finite parts, but of parts that 
are successively dependent each on the other. Plants, 
animals, men, exist not merely in succession, but each 
generation depends for its existence on that which pre- 
ceded. Inasmuch as each part is dependent, can the 
whole be independent ? Can there be an infinite series 
every part of which had a beginning, but the series 
itself no beginning ; a chain, each link of which de- 
pends on another, but the whole on nothing. 1 

That the argument is not materially modified by the 
introduction of this new element, will appear on a little 
reflection. In any argument or illustration of this sort, 
as for instance that of the chain, ideas derived from 
things finite are carried forward and applied to things 
infinite, and it is more than possible that some fallacy 
may lurk under such a method of reasoning. Because 
there cannot be a chain of numberless iron links sus- 
pended in the air without some point of support out of 

1 See note (B.) at the end of this Article. 



248 



STUDIES IX THEOLOGY. 



itself, it does not follow that there cannot be, or that 
there has not been, an infinite series of generations 
of living men, plants, or animals in the world, each 
starting from the preceding, yet the whole series inde- 
pendent of any external producing cause. If the series 
be infinite, it is for that very reason, and by the very 
supposition, independent also. There is a virtual yetitio 
principii involved in this reasoning. It is confidently 
asked on what the whole chain hangs, thus presuming 
a first link ; whereas, if the chain be infinite, according 
to the supposition, it has no first link. What produced 
the first man, plant, animal, of a series which is infi- 
nite and therefore has no first ? Where did that begin 
which by the very supposition has no beginning? 

And where does he who so confidently propounds 
this query, as if it were the end of all controversy, pro- 
pose to suspend his chain of existence? On a great 
first link of course, and that link infinite and endless, 
itself unsupported, and hanging upon nothing. Has 
lie ever seen such a chain ? Is it not evident that 
this method of reasoning by illustrations drawn from 
sensible objects, is, whatever its logical value and force, 
an instrument capable of turning in either direction, 
and quite as likely to operate against as for him who 
uses it. 

We come directly back, then, after all, to the simple 
question already discussed, can there be any such thing 
as an infinite succession of series ? Whatever may be 
the true answer to this problem, the considerations now 
suggested are, it would seem, sufficient to show that the 
alleged impossibility of such a thing as infinite or eter- 
nal succession is, to say the least, not a self-evident 
proposition. In an argument of this sort, derived from 



NATURAL THEOLOGY. 



249 



the abstract laws of being or nature of things, an argu- 
ment so positive withal in its assertions, and so lofty 
in its claims, the mind demands, and has a right to 
demand, clear and positive evidence of the things as- 
serted. When the atheist affirms that the present 
system and order of things is actually an eternal series, 
without beginning or cause, we demand proof; when 
the theist affirms that an infinite series is an impossibil- 
ity, we demand of him likewise the irresistible evidence 
of what he asserts. It may be fairly questioned whether 
either theist or atheist can make good his assertion ; 
whether both have not undertaken to prove what can- 
not be proved. Certainly the mere possibility of an 
eternal series, even if it were granted, is no evidence 
that the present system is in fact such a series. On 
the other hand the argument under consideration fails 
to furnish clear and sufficient proof that the present 
order of things is a begun arrangement, an effect. 

It has been shrewdly objected to the idea of infinite 
succession, that in this way we should obtain infinite 
quantities that are unequal to each other, one infi- 
nite greater than another infinite ; that if the genera- 
tions are infinite, the number of individuals must be 
vastly greater than that of generations, and the number 
of eyes, limbs, etc., so many times greater than that of 
individuals, and so we have one infinite ten times as 
large as another infinite, and that again just half as 
large as another, which it is affirmed is sheer absurdity. 
So reasons Bentley,- and others after him have at- 
tained to the same sharpness. The dialectic subtilty 
of this objection is more worthy of admiration than its 
logical force. Are all infinites equal, of necessity ? 
Where is the evidence of that ? Clark, the very Phi- 



250 



STUDIES IN THEOLOGY. 



listine of dialectic warfare confesses the futility of this 
reasoning. " To ask whether the parts of unequal 
quantities be equal in number or not, when they have 
no number at all, being the same thing as to ask 
whether two lines drawn from differently distant points, 
and each of them continued infinitely, be equal in 
length or not, that is whether they end together, when 
neither of them have any end at all ! "* 

The other argument by which metaphysical writers 
have endeavored to prove that the present system of 
things is not eternal, viz. that it admits of change, 
next demands attention. It is contended that if the 
world has existed from eternity and is uncaused, the 
ground of its being is in itself alone, in other words it 
is a necessary existence, a thing which it is an absurdity 
and a contradiction to suppose not to exist. But all 
change or modification is inconsistent with the idea of 
necessary existence. If the world is a necessary exist- 
ence,, then it can never have been, or be supposed to 
have been, other than it now is, in any respect. It would 
be a contradiction and absurdity to suppose it either 
larger or smaller than it actually is ; either swifter or 
slower in its movements, having more or fewer moun- 
tains, rivers, seas, plants, animals, than it now has. 
Everything is fixed by the law of absolute unalterable 
necessity. But such is not the fact with respect to the 
present system. It admits of and is constantly under- 
going change, and cannot therefore be eternal. Such 
is substantially the reasoning of Clark in his celebrated 
Demonstration. 

With all deference to the great minds that have elab- 
orated, and the great names that have endorsed, this 

1 Demonstration, p. 35. 



NATURAL THEOLOGY. 



251 



argument, it may nevertheless be called in question ; 
the more so that it has ever professed itself fearless of 
scrutiny, and boldly challenged investigation. 

Where then, it may be' asked, is the evidence that all 
change is inconsistent with self-existence ? how do we 
know that ? Let the same method of reasoning be 
applied to the divine existence. The Deity, it will be 
admitted, exists by a necessity of his own nature ; owes 
his existence to nothing out of himself. It is impossi- 
ble, then, according to this argument, to conceive of him 
either as not existing or as being other than he is. Bnt 
how is this ? Since I can conceive the world not to 
exist, can I not also, in that case, conceive the world- 
maker not to be ; the work being gone, what forbids my 
supposing there is no workman ? Or I can conceive 
that it is self-evident, and then, being no longer an 
effect, it does not demand a cause. Or I can conceive 
it to be a different sort of world from what it is, in 
which case it may have required a different kind of 
Deity to produce it. Had it been a malevolent effect, 
I should have inferred a malevolent cause. In a word, 
there is no inconsistency, or absurdity, in modifying 
our conceptions of the maker, in such a manner as to 
correspond to any changes we may make in our con- 
ceptions of the things made. If it be not absurd or 
impossible to conceive of the world as not existing, or 
as existing otherwise than now, then it is not absurd 
or impossible to conceive of the Deity as not existing, 
or as being other than he now is. But it is a contra- 
diction in terms, says Clark, to suppose a self-existent, 
that is, a necessarily existent, being not to exist, or to 
be other than it is. Therefore, he says, this world is 
not self-cxistent. Therefore, he might add also, the 
Deity is not self-existent. 



252 



STUDIES IN THEOLOGY. 



But in those conceptions which the mind ordinarily 
forms, and is taught to, form of the Deity, is there not 
involved something of this forbidden element, of transi- 
tion from one state or circumstance of being to another ? 
do we not conceive of him now as working, now as 
resting from his works, and that without any implied 
change in his nature or attributes ? Now who will say 
that in this transition of the Supreme Being from the 
state of absolute rest and alone existence, to that great- 
est of all conceivable works, creation — the calling into 
being other existences, and innumerable worlds, and 
systems — there is not involved a change at least as 
great, as occurs on the earth, in the gradual passing 
away of one generation, and the succession of another, 
the falling of a tree in the forest, and the springing up 
of another in its place, or the gradual changes con- 
stantly going on in the relative position of mountain 
and valley, of land and sea ? For in these transitions 
which we observe, this constant succession of things in 
the world, is it not a change of state, and circumstances, 
rather than of nature or essential qualities that we be- 
hold ? How do we know that all this does not take 
place in nature according to some fixed, eternal law, 
founded in the very nature of things, as immutable in 
its character, as unvarying in its operations, existing 
by a necessity as absolute as the Deity itself — the uni- 
versal, eternal, immutable law of transition and succes- 
sion ? What forbids such a supposition, and what is 
there in it inconsistent with the idea of self-existence ? 
Where is the evidence, that these and the like tran- 
sitions have not been going on eternally ? 

But however that may be, if we can and do conceive 
of the Supreme Being as working, or as resting from his 



NATURAL THEOLOGY. 



253 



works, as existing for a longer or a shorter time before 
beginning to create, as calling into existence more or 
fewer planets, systems, orders of being, as having never 
created, — if in any or all these respects we can, without 
absurdity, suppose the Deity to have been or to have 
done far otherwise than he has actually been or done, 
if it be, in fact, no more a contradiction to reason and 
to the actual state of things to make such a -supposition, 
than it is to suppose the world different from what it 
now is, then how does it appear that all change, and 
even the very conception and possibility of change, is 
inconsistent with necessary and eternal existence ? And 
if this be not inconsistent with the necessary existence 
of the Deity, why should it be with that of the universe, 
or of being in general ? 

But to suppose a self-existent being not to exist, or 
to exist otherwise than it is, involves as great an ab- 
surdity, says Clark, as to suppose two and two not 
to be equal to four. But suppose one were to deny 
this. Suppose some one, less acute than the great phi- 
losopher, were audacious enough to say: " To my mind 
this does not so appear, nor can I possibly make it 
appear thus," what shall be done with this man? How 
shall he be made to perceive the alleged absurdity ? Is 
not his denial of any such absurdity, as valid in argu- 
ment, as our assertion of it ? To say the least, is it not 
somewhat singular that if this be, as its advocates affirm, 
a self-evident truth, so many, and by no means illiterate 
or ill-informed, minds should have confessed themselves 
unable to perceive its conclusiveness ? 

The argument under consideration, however subtile 
and ingenious, has failed to commend itself generally 
to reflecting minds, much more to the popular appre- 



254 



STUDIES IN THEOLOGY. 



hension. Dr. Reid says of it : " These are the specu- 
lations of men of superior genius ; but whether they 
be solid as they are sublime, or whether they be the 
wanderings of imagination into a region beyond the 
limits of the human understanding, I* am unable to 
determine." Dr. Brown speaks with more confidence : 
" I conceive the abstract arguments which have been 
adduced to show that it is impossible for matter to have 
existed from eternity — by reasoning on what has been 
termed necessary existence, and the incompatibility of 
this necessary existence with the qualities of matter — to 
be relics of the mere verbal logic of the schools, as little 
capable of producing conviction, as any of the wildest 
and most absurd of the technical scholastic reasonings 
on the properties, or supposed properties, of entity and 
non-entity." Dr. Chalmers also professes himself en- 
tirely unsatisfied with this argument, and unimpressed 
by it : " Because I can imagine Jupiter to be a sphere 
instead of a spheroid, and no logical absurdity stands 
in the way of such imagination, therefore Jupiter must 
have been created. Because he has only four satel- 
lites, whilst I can figure him to have ten — and there is 
not the same arithmetical falsity in this supposition as 
in that three and one make up ten, — therefore all the 

satellites must have had a beginning We must 

acknowledge ourselves to be unimpressed by such rea- 
soning. For aught I know, or can be made by the light 
of nature to believe, matter may, in spite of those dis- 
positions which he calls arbitrary, have the necessity 
within itself of its own existence, and yet be neither a 
logical nor a mathematical necessity. It may be a 
physical necessity, the ground of which I understand 
not, because placed transcendentally above my percep- 



NATURAL THEOLOGY. 



255 



tions and my powers, or lying immeasurably beyond 
the range of my contracted and ephemeral observation." 

The metaphysical argument against the eternity of 
the present system has been somewhat differently stated 
by a late ingenious writer. The world might have had 
a beginning ; there is nothing to forbid such a supposi- 
tion. If it might have had a beginning, then it might 
have had a cause ; whatever admits of the one, admits 
of the other. But if it might have had a cause, then it 
must have had one, for whatever is capable of having a 
cause of its existence is incapable of existing without a 
cause. We have here to use an artistic term, a varia- 
tion of the original theme, sprightly and pleasing, but 
embodying the same essential idea. It devolves on the 
reasoner in this case to show, inasmuch as he throws 
the whole weight of the argument on that one word, 
that the world might have had a beginning ; that it is 
possible for anything, for such a thing, for this particu- 
lar thing, to come into existence out of nothing ; and 
also to show that whatever can be caused cannot be 
uncaused ; neither of which propositions can easily or 
clearly be made out by any abstract process of reason- 
ing. Suppose, in the present instance, an obstinate 
objector were to insist upon reversing this argument, 
as an engineer reverses his machine, and so obtains 
movement and speed in a contrary direction. Suppose 
he were to say : It is possible that the world should 
have had no beginning; it might have been eternal. 
If it might have had no beginning then it might have 
had no cause. But if it might have had no cause, then 
it must have had none, for whatever admits of being 
uncaused does not admit of being caused. 

It will be observed that in this investigation we have 



256 



STUDIES IN THEOLOGY. 



not been careful to distinguish between the existence 
of matter in the abstract, and its existence in the pres- 
ent state and system of things, as we find it in our 
world. The. argument, in fact, includes both ; nor is 
the distinction essential to it, since if the non-eternity 
cither of matter abstractly, or of our world as we find 
it, were once clearly established, we obtain in either 
case the demonstration of a first cause. 

Whether this point can be established by any ab- 
stract process of reasoning is, to say the least, altogether 
questionable. As brought to prove the present system 
an effect, and so to establish the existence of a first 
cause, the metaphysical argument must on the whole, it 
would seem, be pronounced unsatisfactory and unsound. 
When once this point is established the method in ques- 
tion may, however, be of service in demonstrating the 
self-existence, independence, and eternity of that first 
cause, which can perhaps in no other way be so clearly 
shown. 

How, then, it will be asked, since not in this way, is 
that most important point, absolutely essential indeed 
to the argument, and to the whole science of natural 
theology, to be made certain ? That the present system, 
this world of ours, had a beginning, may, we believe, be 
clearly shown, if not metaphysically, yet in some other 
way. The physical sciences have it for their appropriate 
sphere and province to do this ; and they can do it to 
the satisfaction it would seem of any reasonable mind. 
They can and do show that the present things have not 
always been ; that our earth has passed through a series 
of changes always advancing. In the deep foundations 
of the globe itself they read the sure history of these 
changes, written as with an iron pen and lead in the 



NATURAL THEOLOGY. 



257 



rock forever. They carry us, with unerring step, back 
to a period in that history when, instead of the present 
highly organized forms of matter, and of life, there is 
no longer the least perceptible trace of any organization 
whatever. Back of the ever-rushing stream of time, 
and beneath its mighty cataract, they conduct us along, 
till we reach the spot where all forms of organized 
being finally disappear, and we stand on " termination 
rock ; " beyond, all is darkness ; we can go no further ; 
but the conclusion irresistibly forces itself upon the 
mind, uttered as with the sound of many waters, that 
this unorganized matter, too, had its beginning. But 
however that may be, one thing is now certain, that life, 
in all its varieties of structure and development — life in 
the plant, the animal, the human species, had a begin- 
ning. We reach, we examine, a point in the earth's 
history when, as yet, there were none of these things. 
But if these things began, there must have been a be- 
ginner ; one capable of producing such things. The 
existence of a first cause is thus reached. 1 

In all this, however, we are reasoning not from meta- 
physics, but from physics. So doing we build not upon 
airy abstractions, but upon the firm and solid earth. 

II. We come now to the second method or argument 
in natural theology, an argument not from the existence 
of matter, but from its manifest properties and relations. 
The starting-point, the irov (tto), is entirely changed ; the 
scene is laid, not in the distant places of the universe, but 
near at home, amid the daily walks and under the com- 
mon observation of men ; the argument rests, not on the 
abstract truth that matter, or even our world, exists, 
but that it is such a sort of world as we find it to be. 

1 See note (C.) at the end of this Article. 
17 



258 



STUDIES IN THEOLOGY. 



The strongly practical tendencies of the English mind 
have made this a favorite method of reasoning with 
theological writers of that country, especially for the 
last century ; previously to which, the metaphysical 
reasoning of Clark, and others of that school, held, for 
a time, predominant influence. The argument is, that 
in the world, as it lies before us, there are such evident 
indications of contrivance, such adaptation of means to 
ends, such fitness of one thing to another, as can leave 
no reasonable mind in doubt that an intelligent, de- 
signing mind has been concerned in the arrangement ; 
in other words, that there must have been a contriver. 

What, now, is the real strength and true value of 
this argument ? Has it sound logic, and a sound 
philosophy as its basis and support ? In proposing and 
conducting such inquiries, let us not be understood as 
disparaging, much less abandoning, this method of 
reasoning, but rather as diligently carrying on a sort 
of coast-survey and soundings, with a view to ascertain 
the true depth of the channel and its proper direction. 
The more important the channel, the more important 
that such survey and soundings should be accurately 
and thoroughly made. 

It must be borne in mind that whatever method we 
pursue in natural theology, the things to be done, as 
stated at the outset, are these two : First, to show con- 
clusively that something is an effect; then, that it is 
such an effect as to require for its producing cause 
whatever we include under the name and idea of God. 
Does, then, the argument from design, as now stated, 
really accomplish these two things ? 

In order to settle this point, we must first determine 
what degree and kind of evidence is necessary in order 



NATURAL THEOLOGY. 



259 



to prove anything to be an effect. How are we to 
know what is effect, and what is not ? The real ques- 
tion is not what proves a designer, but what proves 
design. Does simple fitness of means to an end prove 
it ? This is assumed, it will be perceived, in the argu- 
ment now under consideration. It is the running 
principle that pervades, and holds together, the entire 
body of reasoning in Paley's justly admired treatise — 
the warp that receives the entire rilling, with all its 
beautiful devices. The design of the work and object 
of the writer is evidently this : to point out in nature 
a considerable number of instances, as striking as pos- 
sible, of this manifest fitness of means to a given end ; 
and thence to draw the conclusion, from the facts ob- 
served, that this fitness must have been designed, must 
be an effect, and therefore requires an efficient cause 
or producer. It is assumed that simple fitness of 
means to an end is a sufficient basis on which to con- 
struct the argument, is in itself demonstration that the 
system of things which exhibits such arrangement and 
relation of parts must be an effect. The whole argu- 
ment from design, as usually brought forward by its 
advocates, rests upon this essential premise, which, 
instead of assuming, it had been well perhaps to have 
examined somewhat thoroughly before proceeding to 
build so important a structure upon it. This seems 
nowhere to have been .done. Everywhere it is taken 
for granted that fitness of things to given ends is con- 
trivance, and so proves a contriver. But is this inva- 
riably and necessarily so ? Is there no element over- 
looked in this process ? Does simple fitness to an end, 
however striking and admirable that fitness may be, 
in itself prove design ? Is it of no consequence that 



260 



STUDIES IN THEOLOGY. 



Ave should know whether this relation and fitness of 
things, which we call contrivance, is a begun arrange- 
ment, or not ? If, in proposing these inquiries, we seem 
to be striking at the very foundation of the argument 
from design, as usually advanced, it is only that we 
may replace that argument upon a firmer basis. 

The question is one not to be determined at a glance. 
The simple fact that the human mind, whether rightly 
or wrongly, logically or illogically, does nevertheless 
almost universally reason in this manner, that where 
there is manifest fitness of things to given ends, there 
is design, there is an effect, somebody has been at work 
there, this of itself goes far toward establishing the 
correctness of the principle in question. But how is it, 
and why is it, that we invariably reason in this manner? 
This is a matter deserving the closest attention. 

Reid, Stewart, and the philosophers of that school 
refer the matter to a 'primary law of the human mind. 
We are so constituted that when we perceive this rela- 
tion of things, this fitting of one thing to another so as 
to bring about a certain end, we are convinced that 
there must have been design there — contrivance — a 
contriver ; and in coming to this conclusion we simply 
carry out the law of our nature. 

Now it is easy to account for any phenomenon which 
we imperfectly understand in this way — to refer it to 
a primary law of the mind, and say we are so consti- 
tuted, and that is the end of the matter. Nor is it 
easy for any one to show that such is not the true 
solution of the problem. It deserves to be considered, 
however, whether, in the present instance, such a prin- 
ciple will not carry us too far. If it be a primary law 
of the human mind that leads us to reason thus, then 



NATURAL THEOLOGY. 



261 



such reasoning is beyond question correct, and its con- 
clusions valid. Wherever we see this fitness and rela- 
tion of things, there it becomes certain that design has 
been employed. We have the best possible evidence 
of it, the testimony of this primary law of our own 
being, which, unless we are so constituted as to be 
always deceived, must speak the truth. Whatever 
presents to our mind, then, any fitness to a given end 
is beyond doubt an effect, a contrivance ; the greater 
and more manifest the fitness, the greater and more 
sublime the end to be accomplished, so much the 
greater the evidence and the certainty of this. Above 
all other beings and things, then, we must conclude the 
Deity to be an effect ; for he, of all beings and things, 
presents to our conceptions the greatest and most 
manifest fitness to the greatest and sublimest ends. 
Nor is there any escape from this sad conclusion, but 
to retrace our steps, and proceed anew more cautiously. 

Perceiving the difficulties which are likely to attend 
this solution of the matter, others refer the whole 
thing to human experience. Of this number are Paley 
and Chalmers. It is not, according to them, because 
of any primitive law of the mind that we infer design 
where we see fitness to given ends, but simply because 
our own experience teaches us thus to reason. We 
have ourselves, in repeated instances, observed this 
fitness of things to be the result of special contrivance, 
on our part or on the part of others ; have never, 
perhaps, in a single instance, observed anything of it 
where it was not, to our knowledge and satisfaction, the 
result of such contrivance, We come, therefore, natu- 
rally to conclude that it is invariably so, and, whenever 
we see indications of this quality, we infer that these 



262 



STUDIES IN THEOLOGY. 



are in like manner evidences and results of the opera- 
tion of a designing mind. 

Whatever may be true of the justness of this con- 
clusion, it is altogether probable -that it is one to which 
we are led in the manner now indicated, that is, as the 
result of our own experience. The matter admits of a 
practical test. Suppose one destitute of any such 
experience, having never contrived anything or seen 
aught contrived by others — a child, thrown early in 
life upon some uninhabited island, subsisting on the 
spontaneous productions of nature, unacquainted with 
men and their ways. Let such an one discover, at 
length, on the shore of his solitary dwelling-place, 
some piece of human mechanism — the watch, with 
which Paley introduces his beautiful treatise. He has 
never seen such a thing before ; forms no idea, of 
course, as to what it is, its nature, or use ; is quite as 
likely to think it some strange shell-fish or curious 
insect as anything else. All reasoning about it, and 
from it to a producing cause, is, in such a case, out of 
the question. The child, or child-man, may wonder 
where it came from, or how it came there, but not who 
made it. But suppose, now, the nature of this newly- 
discovered curiosity is in some way made known to 
him. His wondering eye begins to comprehend the 
mysteries of its complicated structure. He discerns 
its use, and the fitness of its parts to subserve that 
use. Does the idea of a maker, a contriver, neces- 
sarily suggest itself to his mind at this stage of the 
process? Why should it? Whence should it come? 
He has never known anything to be produced or con- 
trived. What is there in the thing before him to 
awaken in his mind this new idea ? The thing exists ; 



NATURAL THEOLOGY. 



263 



that is certain ; but, for aught he knows, it may 
always have existed. It is very curious ; that is 
certain ; but it may always have been as curious as 
now. It is capable of use ; but, so far as he can see, 
it may always have been capable of the same. There 
is nothing in the machine itself to indicate that it ever 
had a beginning, or to suggest the idea of a cause. He 
knows not that it is a machine, an effect, a contrivance. 
To him it is simply an existence — one of the thousand 
existences which he perceives about him, all to him 
mysterious ; himself, — if his thoughts should ever travel 
so far into the region of conjecture, — his own existence 
and origin, the greatest of all mysteries to himself. 

How comes, now, this untaught, unobservant being 
to reach the grand idea of a producing cause ? Ac- 
cording to Reid, Stuart, and others, he gets it by the 
operation of a primary law of the mind, which leads 
him, from the perceived fitness of tilings to certain 
ends, to infer at once, and independently of all expe- 
rience, the existence of design and a designer. Accord- 
ing to those who maintain the opposite view, he does 
not get the idea of producing cause at all, and never 
will get it, apart from revelation, until his own expe- 
rience comes to his aid, and guides him to the first 
steps of an analogy, which is to lead him on to the 
sublime conclusion that there is a being who made 
him and all things. 

That this is the right solution of the problem, we 
are strongly inclined to believe. The question returns, 
however, as on the other hypothesis, whether this 
inference, this reasoning from what we know to what 
we do not know, is perfectly just and sound. Assuming 
that the theory last mentioned is the true one, — that 



264 



STUDIES IN THEOLOGY. 



we reason in this manner only from experience, — and 
our experience being necessarily limited, — how far, 
and with what degree of confidence, may we safely 
follow such a guide ? When we reason in this manner 
from analogy, do we reason always safely and conclu- 
sively ? We have seen ships built and houses ; so far 
our experience ; does it follow with certainty, from 
this, that worlds are built also, and are in like manner 
the effect of contrivance ? So we conclude. But is 
the conclusion valid ? Here is a man who, from what- 
ever cause, has never as yet exercised the inventive 
faculties of his mind in the direct contrivance of any- 
thing, with reference to the accomplishment of a given 
end, who has never observed such efforts on the part 
of others, — has no acquaintance, in fact, with the 
manifold devices and arts by which a busy, ever-plotting 
world makes all things subservient to its own purposes. 
This man is, according to the present argument, without 
evidence of the existence of a Supreme Being, in other 
words, of a general designer of all things, since he is 
without personal experience or knowledge of any such 
thing as design. He may perceive manifold and notable 
instances of fitness and adaptation in the material 
world to the purposes of man's being ; but they do not 
excite his wonder, for he has never known these things 
to be otherwise ; much less are they data from which 
he can reason to the unknown and the infinite. Thus 
stands the case with him to-day. To-morrow, for the 
first time, he invents, he contrives, no matter what — 
the simplest mechanism of which we can conceive — a 
wooden peg, a leaf-apron. Now, matters are essentially 
changed. The mystery of the great universe now 
opens before him. He has sufficient data now from 



NATURAL THEOLOGY. 



265 



which to reason, out with unerring certainty the exis- 
tence of a great first cause. " This wooden peg, this 
girdle of platted leaves, is a wonderful thing," solilo- 
quizes our new artist ; " it's an invention of my own 
— a contrivance. It would never have existed in its 
present form, and never have secured its present pur- 
pose, had not my own inventive mind formed the 
design and carried it into execution. Now I under- 
stand how it is this goodly world and I myself exist. 
This peg instructs me. It is manifestly fitted to a 
useful purpose. It has that fitness only because of my 
forethought and contrivance. I am authorized, then, 
to conclude, that whatever seems fitted to some use is, 
in like manner, the product and result of forethought 
and intelligent design, and, as all things about me in 
the universe seem to possess such fitness to useful 
ends, it follows, from this my specimen of contrivance, 
that all things are likewise contrived." Such, we are 
to understand, would be the course of thought in his 
mind ; and, according to the philosophy we are now 
discussing, it is a method of reasoning perfectly fair 
and conclusive. 

Nor is it easy to see what should hinder our artist 
and newly instructed reasoner from proceeding a little 
further in the same direction. Ought he not, in con- 
sistency with the above reasoning, to conclude on the 
same principle, that if there be, anywhere else, out of 
this visible universe and beyond this sphere of observa- 
tion, any form of existence capable of promoting and 
bringing about useful ends, having a fitness therefor, 
that also is a contrivance, and so the being whoever he 
may be, that wrought out and first divined this present 
system, possessed the qualities that fitted him for such 
a work, must par eminence, be an effect. 



2G6 



STUDIES IN T THEOLOGY. 



But even if we suppose him not to reason thus con- 
sistently, but to stop short of that dread conclusion, is 
it not evident, that to infer the contrived existence of 
everything which manifests fitness to useful ends, from 
the known contrivance of anything that has such fit- 
ness, to deduce the mechanism of the universe from the 
manufacture of the simplest human contrivances, is a 
method far too bold and sweeping ; that the basis is 
quite too narrow for the superstructure ; that there are 
and must be limits to this matter of reasoning from the 
results of our experience, the few and little things 
which we know, to the things which we do not know, 
the infinite, the eternal. 

Now it is precisely at this point in the line of defen- 
ces that the enemies of our religion bring their heaviest 
machinery to bear. Because in this world of ours cer- 
tain things are well adapted to certain uses, it does not 
follow, say they, that these things and this world are 
of necessity contrived. There is no evidence of that. 
It is merely an inference of our own, and one based on 
insufficient premises. We came to this conclusion by 
seeing human contrivances and devices. Our experi- 
ence helps us to it. But it does not follow, that because 
we contrive and produce certain arrangements, and 
adaptations of things, therefore all things whatsoever, 
which manifest like fitness to certain ends, are also the 
result of contrivance. The watch that I have seen 
constructed by the skill and ingenuity of the artist, 
may be to me a sufficient datum from which to con- 
clude that other watches are in like manner contrived. 
But what right have I to infer, that all things in the 
universe are thus produced, because I have seen one 
thing made ? If, thrown on an uninhabited shore, I 



NATURAL THEOLOGY. 



267 



should find, in my rambles, some structure of reeds or 
sticks or stones, capable of affording shelter and like to 
the habitations which men construct under such cir- 
cumstances, I might reasonably conclude that some 
one had been there before me, and that this was his 
work. But because this hut of reeds or stones is 
manifestly a contrivance, the result of a producing, 
intelligent cause, shall I proceed at once to the con- 
clusion that the planet Jupiter is likewise a contriv- 
ance, or that the world in which I live is so ? I have 
seen a ring manufactured. Is it therefore certain that 
the rings of Saturn are likewise produced ? Who 
has ever seen a world made, continues the sceptic, 
or known of one being made within the sphere of his 
personal observation ? If one had ever made, or seen 
made, any such thing as a world, then he might reason- 
ably conclude that other worlds were made also. But 
where is the evidence of it as matters now stand ? 

Such is substantially the reasoning of Hume in his 
famous objection to the argument from design. The 
world, he contends, if it be an effect, is a singular one, 
unlike anything which we have ever seen produced. 
We have had no experience in world-making, as we 
have in watch-making, and cannot therefore reason 
from the one case to the other. 

No one, perhaps, has more resolutely girded himself 
to encounter this formidable objection than the truly 
noble Chalmers. Admitting that experience is the 
basis of all our reasoning in such matters, he contends 
that in the present case we are not destitute of that 
basis, but, on the contrary, have all the experience we 
need. It is not necessary, he contends, that we should 
take into account the specific end which was intended 



268 



STUDIES IN THEOLOGY. 



to be accomplished in any piece of mechanism, but 
only that we should see an end, and that evidently 
designed. Having in many instances observed the 
invariable connection between a designing intellect as 
cause, and any wise and useful end as the result, we 
may in all cases where one of these two terms is given 
infer the existence of the other. It matters not whether 
we have ever seen a watch made, or any machine 
having exactly that office and use. We have seen 
other things made in which was the like fitness of part 
to part and of means to ends, and in which this fitness 
has always been the result of contrivance. In a thou- 
sand instances we have observed the relation between 
these two things, the fitness and the contrivance, to 
be that of antecedent and consequent, of cause and 
effect. This experience warrants us in concluding 
that whenever we find in any new instance the same 
phenomenon, that is, adaptation to an end, we find it 
there as the result of the same antecedent, that is, a 
designing intelligence. " Thus we might infer the 
agency of design in a watch-maker, though we never 
saw a watch made " ; and so " we can, on the very 
same ground, infer the agency of design on the part of 
a world-maker, though we never saw a world made." 

This reasoning is valid on the supposition that there 
is such a being as a world-maker ; in other words, that 
the world is an effect — a thing made. The argument 
proceeds entirely and avowedly on this supposition. 
It is only in things made that we perceive this invariable 
connection between fitness and an end in the things 
produced, and designing intelligence in the producer. 
It is only in things made, therefore, that, having one of 
these terms, we can safely infer the other. If we ex- 



NATURAL THEOLOGY. 



269 



tend the inference to other classes of objects, to things 
not produced, or of whose production and begun exis- 
tence we have no evidence, we set sail on an ocean of 
which we know not the shores and bounds, if indeed 
there be any, or to what strange lands our venturesome 
course may tend. We drive" before the winds with 
neither chart njor way-mark to guide us, nor any head- 
land in view, sed coelum undique, et undique pontus. 
Nay, it is not difficult to foresee on what rocks we 
must in the end be driven ; for if we reason in this 
manner from things which we know to be produced to 
things which we do not know to be so, and conclude 
that fitness in the latter is the result of contrivance 
because it is so in the former, then we must include 
the Deity himself in our catalogue of effects ; nor is 
there any possible way of escaping that conclusion. 

Now, beyond doubt, if the world be an effect, — a 
produced and not an eternal existence, — it is the pro- 
duction of an intelligent and designing cause. But is 
it an effect ? This is the very gist and substance of 
the whole question — the very thing we are in pursuit 
of, but which, after all, is as far from our grasp as 
ever. The argument of Chalmers does not put us in 
possession of this, nor, indeed, does it profess to do so. 
It is a point which must be reached, if at all, in some 
other way. 

The argument from design, however, as usually ad- 
vanced, is intended and supposed, by those who bring 
it forward, to establish this very point, that this our 
world is an eifect, a contrivance, and must therefore 
have had a contriver. They rely upon it as conclusive 
of this matter. Thus stated, the argument in question 
must be regarded as logically and essentially defective. 



270 



STUDIES IN THEOLOGY. 



Mere fitness to an end does not of itself, as we have 
shown, prove design. We must first know that this 
fitness and the substance to which it pertains is a begun 
arrangement, a begun existence. Nor is there any- 
thing in the mere fitness, however striking that may 
be, to determine the point wli ether such fitness, and the 
subject or substance to which it pertains, be or be not 
an effect, a begun arrangement, in distinction from 
existence uncaused and eternal. There is this essential 
defect in the argument from design as usually stated. 
It is the defect of Paley and other reasoners. They 
rely upon the fitness of things, as of itself proving 
contrivance, irrespective of the question whether this 
fitness had a beginning or not. 

The true method of establishing this first, chief, 
absolutely essential point in natural theology — that 
the present system of things is an effect, had a begin- 
ning and a cause of beginning — has been already 
indicated. It is not for any process of reasoning, 
whether from the abstract existence of matter or from 
its wonderful adaptations and arrangements, to set this 
matter in a clear light. It is for science only to do this. 
It is for her to trace out for us in nature itself the written 
demonstration, not simply of the begun, but of the 
recently begun, existence of whatever forms of organized 
life dwell upon the earth and in its waters ; to show us 
the relics and records of a period quite antecedent to 
this of ours, — nay, of many such periods; and so to 
furnish us with the clearest evidence that, whatever 
may be true of matter in the abstract, this fair and 
goodly frame of things which we now behold, and 
wherein we dwell, is an edifice of recent date. And 
this is enough for the purposes of the argument. To 



NATURAL THEOLOGY. 



271 



show that there is an effect, is to show that there is a 
cause. If these things began, there must have been 
a beginner. 

Now it is at this precise point in the demonstration, 
and not at any previous stage in the process, that the 
argument from design falls into its proper place and 
use. The present things, being not eternal but begun 
existences, must be the result not of blind chance and 
mere fortuity, nor of an unintelligent, unintentional 
agent, working without purpose or plan and creating 
at random ; but evidently and most manifestly they 
are the work of an intelligent and designing cause. 
There is order about them — forethought, intention, 
plan about them ; they are mechanism, not mere effects ; 
must therefore have had not a cause, merely, but a 
contriver capable of planning and executing such de- 
signs. The wisdom, skill, power of the being who 
made these things are thus demonstrated ; to some 
extent, also, though not with equal clearness, perhaps, 
his goodness and his other moral attributes are evinced. 

Such would seem to be the true province, the logical 
value, of the argument from design, — not to prove the 
world or the present system of things to be an effect, 
but — that being settled in another manner — to show 
what sort of an effect it is, and what sort of a cause is 
required to account for it, namely, such a cause as 
answers to the idea of God. It must follow, not pre- 
cede, much less set aside, the testimony of physical 
science as to the origin of the present system. In its 
proper place it is valuable, indispensable ; out of it, of 
little worth. 1 

Thus far we have considered only those arguments 

1 Sec note (D.) at the end of this Article. 



272 



STUDIES IN THEOLOGY. 



in natural theology which are derived from the external 
world. These may seem sufficient. Perhaps they are 
so ; but they are evidently not the whole field and 
scope of the science. They do not exhaust the theme. 
Beside this material system and mechanism that is in 
operation around us, this fair structure and frame of 
things without, there is in existence another and a 
different sort of world, immaterial, invisible, not less 
wonderful, not less replete it should seem with evidence 
of the mighty Maker — the inner world, the spiritual 
part of man. This, again, unfolds itself into a twofold 
division, the mental and the moral nature; each of 
which furnishes independent evidence for the existence 
of a first cause. Upon this department of the subject, 
not less important than that which has already en- 
gaged our attention, nor less deserving a thorough 
investigation, we are compelled by our already ex- 
ceeded limits to touch briefly, if at all. 

III. The argument derived from the nature and con- 
stitution of the human mind. The argument which 
we are now to present admits of being stated in differ- 
ent forms, but is based on the essential fact that there 
is in the human mind an idea of such a being as God. 

The following is in substance the famous method of 
Descartes. 

Among the various ideas which I find in my mind 
is one of a very peculiar character, unlike all others, 
and which I am at a loss to account for — the idea, 
that is, of a being infinite, eternal, independent, immu- 
table, the first cause of all other being. Sublime idea, 
and most wonderful withal ! But how came I by such 
an idea ? How shall the mysterious phenomenon be 
explained, that into my mind, limited as it is in the 



NATURAL THEOLOGY. 



273 



range of its observation and reflection, the thought, 
the bare conception, of such and so vast a being should 
enter ? Whence came this idea to me ? The qualities 
enumerated are such and so excellent that the more I 
reflect upon them the more sure I am that the idea of 
a being in whom they all reside, and that perfectly, 
could never have originated in my own mind ; for how 
can the finite gire birth to the infinite ? Does it origi- 
nate in the fact that I perceive in myself the negation, 
the absence of these qualities ? But how came I to 
know that there were such qualities, and that I was 
destitute of them ; how should I know my own imper- 
fection and finiteness, if there were, not already in my 
mind the idea of some perfect, some infinite being with 
whom to compare myself? Does it proceed from tra- 
dition ? Then where did the tradition originate ? 
Whence came the idea of such a being to the mind 
that first entertained the thought, and handed it down 
to others ? Is the mind so formed as to reach the 
thought spontaneously, by its own natural laws and 
operations ? Then who formed it so ? Is it a simple 
matter of revelation ? Then who revealed it ? In 
fine, there is but one way in which we can account for 
this phenomenon, this idea in man of a being so unlike 
himself, and that is that the idea has its corresponding 
reality ; that such a being does actually exist ; and 
that this idea of him which we find in our minds, 
wrought into our very being, is the stamp and im- 
pression of the workman's name, set indelibly upon the 
work. 

The force and validity of this reasoning depend 
entirely on its ability to show that the idea of God in 
the human mind is not only an effect, but such an 

18 



274 



STUDIES IN THEOLOGY. 



effect as absolutely requires God for its cause. This it 
essays to do. That the idea in question is an effect of 
something is doubtless true, for it is not in the nature 
of an idea to be self-existent or uncaused ; but that it 
could not have originated in the mind itself by the 
mind's own simple action is not so clear. It is not any 
easy matter, if it be indeed a possible thing, to trace an 
idea, and especially such an one, to its true source, 
and determine with precision and certainty its real 
origin. What is there in this idea which precludes 
the possibility of its being the product of the mind 
itself? Is it certain that the finite cannot reach the 
idea of the infinite? Is it absolutely necessary that 
there should actually exist, and be known by me to 
exist, a being more wise or powerful than myself, in 
order for me to discover that my wisdom and my 
power are limited ? And does not the idea of the 
unlimited, the infinite, stand over against the idea of 
the limited and the finite, so that, by the simple law 
of contrasts, if we have one, we get the other also ? 
Do not the differences which we observe among men — 
one being greatly superior to another in power, skill, 
etc. — lead us naturally to conceive of one superior to 
them all, in whom may reside the perfection of these 
various qualities, and whose powers may be unlimited ? 
If in any such manner it is possible for the mind, 
unaided from without, and in the exercise of its own 
proper faculties, to reach the idea of Deity, then it is 
not certain but the idea in question may in fact have 
thus originated. In other words, the existence of the 
idea does not render certain the actual existence of 
the being corresponding to that idea, inasmuch as the 
existence of the idea can be accounted for in some 



NATURAL THEOLOGY. 



275 



other way. The argument labors at a disadvantage 
in undertaking to show positively that the idea in 
question could never have entered the human mind 
had there been no such being as God in existence. 
This is more than can be determined with certainty. 
And yet it deserves to be considered well by us, more 
than we are wont to do in these exact and logical 
processes of reason, which call into exercise the intel- 
lect, and not the heart, whether, in fact, the idea of 
such a being as God, the infinite, the uncaused, the 
eternal, the supreme, Author of all being and perfec- 
tion, be not something in itself more vast and wonder- 
ful than we have been accustomed to regard it; whether 
the simple conception and thought of such a being is 
not in itself, when duly considered, a grand and 
sublime mystery — a thought before which all others 
in the mind ought to bow down in awe and reverence 
— a thought which may be the very shadow cast upon 
the human soul of that mysterious, incomprehensible, 
unseen one of whose being and presence it dimly 
informs us. Whatever may be the errors of the Carte- 
sian philosophy, it has at least this element of truth 
and beauty, that it invests the idea of God in the 
human mind, regarded as a simple and pure concep- 
tion, with a dignity and importance, and regards it 
with a reverence, well befitting its august and real 
character. 

From . the same source — the idea formed in the 
mind — Descartes derives also the following argument 
for the divine existence, which, though distinct from 
the one already stated, involves essentially the same 
principles. 

Pertaining to this idea of God which is in the mind 



276 



STUDIES IN THEOLOGY. 



is this peculiarity, as I perceive, by which it differs 
from all other ideas, namely, that I cannot separate in 
my thoughts the ideal and the actual — cannot, as in 
all other cases, distinguish in my mind the existence 
from the essence — cannot divest my conception of the 
Divine Being of this element or idea, that he does actu- 
ally exist. Take away from me the conception which 
I form of this being as an actual, eternal, necessary 
existence, and you take away my whole idea of God ; 
nothing is left in my mind, nor can I conceive of him 
in any other way. It must be, then, that actual, 
eternal, and necessary existence does really pertain to 
this being. For how do we determine, in any case, 
what are the essential qualities of any object? Is it 
not by observing that such and such qualities pertain 
to the very nature of the object, and are inseparable 
from it ? I see clearly, for instance, whenever I think 
of a rectilinear triangle, that its angles are in amount 
equal to two right angles ; cannot conceive of a recti- 
linear triangle of which this shall not be true. Hence 
I conclude, that this equality of the angles to two right 
angles is something inseparable from the nature of 
such a triangle ; and that whether there, is any such 
thing as a triangle actually in existence or not. In 
like manner, when I think of God, the idea invariably 
presents itself of a being to whom actual and real 
existence pertains. Existence pertains to the highest 
perfection ; and my only idea of God is that of a being 
every way perfect. I can no more conceive of an 
imperfect God, i.e. a God existing only in name or 
idea or supposition, and not in reality, than I can con- 
ceive of a triangle the sum of whose angles shall be 
less than two right angles. 



NATURAL THEOLOGY. 



277 



This argument, like the preceding, is based on that 
cardinal doctrine of the Cartesian system, that every 
pure and simple idea has its corresponding objective 
reality, from which it originates, and of which it is but 
the tableau or image; and that whatever pertains insep- 
arably and essentially to the idea belongs also invariably 
to the reality — a principle we cannot here stay to 
discuss. That there is a fallacy, however, in the argu- 
ment now stated, is obvious. It does not follow, 
because I conceive of a triangle possessing a certain 
property, and never think of it otherwise, that any 
such triangle exists, but only that if it exists, then this 
property belongs to it. Neither does it follow that any 
such being as God exists, simply because I conceive of 
him as existing, and as possessing certain properties, as 
eternal, independent, and necessary being; but only 
that if such a being exists, then these qualities may be 
supposed to belong to him. Nothing is in reality 
determined as to the previous question, whether there 
really is such a being. 

Aside from this, it admits of question whether the 
premise is correct ; whether there is, really and of 
necessity, this alleged difference between our ideas of 
God and our ideas of other objects; whether we cannot, 
if we will, conceive of God otherwise than as a real, 
actual existence, in the same sense that we can con- 
ceive of a star of a certain magnitude and brilliancy, 
and having a certain position in the firmament, without 
at the same time being sure that such a star actually 
exists. But on this we cannot dwell. 

It is somewhat remarkable that Dr. Clarke, though 
professing great abhorrence of the Cartesian philosophy 
and method of reasoning, should himself unconsciously 



278 



STUDIES IN THEOLOGY. 



have constructed an argument very like the one now 
presented. We refer to that part of his treatise in 
which he discourses respecting " the absolute impossi- 
bility of destroying or removing some ideas , as of 
eternity and immensity, which therefore must be modes 
or attributes of a necessary being actually existing." 
" For," continues he, " if I have in my mind an idea 
of a thing, and cannot possibly in my imagination take 
away the idea of that thing as actually existing, any 
more than I can change or take away the idea of the 
equality of twice two to four, the certainty of the 
existence of that thing is the same, and stands on the 
same foundation, as the certainty of the other relation. 
For the relation of equality between twice two and four 
has no other certainty but this, that I cannot, without a 
contradiction, change or take away the idea of that rela- 
tion." 1 Elsewhere he thus expresses the same thing : 
" We always find in our minds some ideas, as of infinity 
and eternity, which to remove, that is, to suppose that 
there is no being, no substance in the universe to which 
these attributes or modes of existence are necessarily 
inherent, is a contradiction in the very terms. For 
modes and attributes exist only by the substance to 
which they belong. Now he that can suppose eternity 
and immensity removed out of the universe, may, if he 
please, as easily remove the relation of equality between 
twice two and four." 2 

This argument is based evidently on the assumption 
that immensity and eternity are attributes of substance 
or being — an assumption purely gratuitous and without 
proof. Space answers both these conditions, possesses 
both these qualities or attributes — eternity and im- 

1 Demonstration, p. 21. 2 Demonstration, p. 15. 



NATURAL THEOLOGY. 



279 



mensity. Yet space is not being, much less is it God. 
With all respect then, for the truly great man who 
thus reasons, we can but regard this as an argument 
more specious than solid, about which the thing chiefly 
wonderful is, how it could ever have misled or per- 
plexed a truly discerning mind. 

Respecting the ideal argument as a whole, the con- 
clusion at which, after a candid and thorough examina- 
tion, the lover of truth will be likely to arrive, would 
seem to be this : that while the idea which the human 
mind forms of God, and the fact that it does of its own 
accord, as it would seem, reach and entertain that 
wonderful idea, do afford strong presumptive evidence 
of the existence of such a being, and may well and 
greatly strengthen our belief in that existence derived 
from other sources, they cannot be regarded as in 
themselves furnishing clear and absolute demonstration 
of that great truth. For this we must look elsewhere. 

IV. It remains for us to discuss only the argument 
derived from the moral constitution of man. 

Among the various active principles and powers of 
the human soul, each having its appropriate object 
and sphere, and tending each to a certain definite 
result, there is observed one whose office and operation 
it seems to be to preside over all the rest — the regu- 
lator, as it may not inaptly be termed, or law-power, 
of the whole moral machinery in its various and com- 
plicated movements. This is the principle which we 
call conscience, whose established authority in the soul 
is one of the most remarkable phenomena in its history 
and constitution. 

It has indeed been contended by some that this is by 
no means, in fact, a universal and invariable law — 



280 



STUDIES IN THEOLOGY. 



that men, and even whole tribes and nations, are to be 
found who seem to have no conscience. Now, it is 
doubtless true that many, are to be found in the world 
who do not obey this law of the inner being — in whom 
it comes by desuetude to be a silent and virtually a 
dead letter ; but certainly there is a palpable and broad 
distinction between the authority, and the actual power 
of a law. That which is a law de jure may not in all 
cases be a law de facto. It is sufficient that there is in 
man a moral principle o*r power whose object and evi- 
dent legitimate office is to control his moral action ; 
and that, when left to its own proper functions, unper- 
verted, undestroyed, it does execute that office, not 
without a sort of majesty and truly regal sway. It is 
no evidence against the existence and rightful authority 
of a king in the land, that he is for the time driven 
from his palace and his throne by a revolutionary 
faction ; nor against the existence and rightful author- 
ity of a statute, that, in a state of anarchy and rebellion, 
men no longer recognize its right or submit to its 
control. This distinction between the lex de jure and 
the lex de facto, as regards the human conscience — 
a distinction which was first clearly pointed out by 
Bishop Butler, and has been fully elaborated by Chalmers 
— is at once a very plain and a very important distinc- 
tion, and constitutes a sufficient answer to the objection 
now stated. 

Upon this observed peculiarity in the moral consti- 
tution, this law of our nature, theologians have con- 
structed a favorite and powerful argument in proof of 
the divine existence. Here is a law. Where and who 
is the law-maker ? Here is the various machinery of a 
court. Is there not somewhere a legislator and a 



NATURAL THEOLOGY. 



281 



judge ? So it would seem ; and so, we presume, men 
would naturally and generally conclude. The evidence 
may be regarded, however, as presumptive, rather than 
demonstrative, when we come to look more closely at 
it. inasmuch as it proceeds upon the supposition that 
the soul of man is a creation. Here, says the rea- 
soner, is a piece of curious mechanism. — a watch, 
— whose movements are all nicely controlled by an 
adjustment called the regulator, which certainly seems 
to have been intended for this very purpose. Is there 
not somewhere an intelligent contriver and controller 
of these movements ? Precisely such is the office of 
conscience in the human soul, and precisely such its 
testimony as to the existence, somewhere, of a power 
capable of appointing and enforcing this authority. 
Unquestionably, we reply, if there be here veritable 
regulation, there must be somewhere a regulator; if 
mechanism, then a maker. But are we sure of the 
premises ? "What if the watch to which this apparatus 
belongs should fail to be proved a machine ? What if 
the soul of man, instead of being a creation, — a thing 
made, — should turn out to be an uncaused and self- 
existent thing ? Then, for aught we know, this regu- 
lating apparatus in both watch and soul may have 
always pertained to them, and in full play, as an 
integral part of themselves. Let it be granted, or first 
proved, that man himself — this spiritual, conscious, 
moral being which we call the soul — is a Created 
existence ; that there is, in other words, true and real 
mechanism here, that what we call the law of con- 
science is a bona fide law, and not simply a mode in 
which the spiritual nature has always acted, that it is 
an arrangement, a begun thing, and it follows, of 



282 



STUDIES IX THEOLOGY. 



course, that there is somewhere, or at least was, a 
beginner and producer thereof. But how are we to 
know this ? That which is here assumed is the very 
thing to be proved, the very point we seek to establish. 
Nor is it from the inspection of the mind itself, or of 
the watch itself, independently of other sources of 
information, that this is to be learned. The regulator, 
in itself considered, cannot inform us whether it has 
always existed and operated as at present, or whether 
it is a piece of pure contrivance and mechanism ; 
neither can the law of the human soul which we term 
conscience. The question is, Have we truly and 
properly a law — a creation — a contrived and orig- 
inated property of a begun and continued existence. 
Not until this point is settled can we appeal to the 
regulating power or principle, in the watch or in the 
soul, as evidence clear and positive of the existence of 
a being extrinsic to themselves, who is in reality the 
controller and governor, as he was the contriver, of 
these truly wonderful movements. 

Now we do not deny that the argument from our 
moral nature, as also that from design, of which we 
have already treated, does furnish evidence of a certain 
kind, presumptive evidence, and that in a high degree, 
of the existence of a Supreme Being ; that it serves 
greatly to strengthen our belief already formed in such 
a being ; that it corroborates the evidence derived from 
other sources, and brings it very near and closely home 
to us ; nay, further, that it is in itself sufficient to 
bring the mind practically to the conviction that there 
is a God, and that its actual operation in the world as 
we find it is to this effect; but only that it is not — 
what in theology, and as the basis of a science, we 



NATURAL THEOLOGY. 



283 



demand and must in some way obtain — a sure and 
positive evidence of this great truth. For nothing can 
be plainer than that a kind or degree of evidence 
which may be amply sufficient to guide one's mind 
and determine one's course and conduct in the practical 
affairs of life, may not be a sufficient basis on which to 
lay the firm and sure foundations of a science. 

The moral argument properly comes in, then, so far 
as the theologian is concerned, not to demonstrate the 
existence of God, but to bear important testimony 
respecting his character and attributes when once that 
previous point is settled ; to show what sort of a being 
God is ; and in this respect it is one of the most valu- 
able and powerful arguments in the whole compass of 
natural theology. 

Especially does this principle of conscience manifest 
the righteousness of God. If he were not himself a 
righteous being and a lover of rectitude, he would not 
have implanted, as he has, this law of the right, and 
this love of it, in every human bosom. As it is, he has 
so made man that by the very constitution of his being, 
and aside from any external or revealed law, he is 
placed under obligation to do right. There is a law 
within him, prior to anything from without, written 
on, or rather wrought into, the soul itself, as the figure 
is woven into the fabric which it adorns. The soul of 
man, approving of the true and the right, whether it 
will or no, wherever these are discerned, points with 
unerring certainty to that which is the source of this 
its moral power, viz. the rectitude of the divine char- 
acter ; even as the poised steel, turning ever to the 
mysterious north, indicates the existence of that un- 
known power which from afar controls all its vibrations, 



284 



STUDIES IX THEOLOGY. 



whose influence it ever feels, and at whose presence it 
trembles. 

The principle of conscience establishes also the in- 
flexible justice of God. It has its awards and punish- 
ments. It visits the evil-doer with the terrible stings 
of guilt and remorse, and throws over him the deep, 
chill shadow of a coming retribution. It dashes into 
every cup of forbidden pleasure the unfailing, insep- 
arable element of consequent wretchedness. It links 
together human crime and human suffering, the vices 
and the miseries of men, so that the one shall follow 
the other invariably, as sound and echo pursue each 
other along the mountain side. There is with it no 
respect of persons, no taking of bribes. With its whip 
of scorpions it pursues the wrong-doer, whoever he 
may be, wherever he may go ; tracks him into every 
obscurity, finds him out in the deepest retirement and 
the darkest night ; overtakes him in his swiftest escape, 
and, like the terrible avenger, pursues and hangs over 
him wherever he takes his way. 

On the other hand, the pleasure which, according to 
the working of this same law, dispensing its awards as 
well as its punishments, attends all virtuous and right 
action, is not less a proof of the divine benevolence. 
Thus to connect inseparably together right-doing and 
happiness, wrong-doing and misery, — so to construct 
and constitute the mind, the spiritual nature, that by 
its own natural working this great end shall be secured, 
— this self -regulating 2^oicer, in other words, of the 
moral machinery, — is in itself one of the highest evi- 
dences, not simply of the divine wisdom and skill, but 
(what is much more to the purpose, and more impor- 
tant to establish) of the goodness of God. We can 



NATURAL THEOLOGY. 



285 



conceive that man might have been so constituted that, 
while under the highest obligations to virtue, neverthe- 
less every instance of right action should be accom- 
panied, not as now, with a verdict of self-approval, and 
that purest of all pleasures, the happiness which he 
feels who is conscious of right intentions and a conduct 
void of offence toward God and man, but, on the con- 
trary, with pain and self-reproach and the wretchedness 
of an unsatisfied nature ; while, on the other hand, 
evil action and all wrong-doing should secure the en- 
joyment of a -present gratification and a consequent 
and enduring happiness. We can conceive that a 
malevolent being icould have so constituted his crea- 
tures, arraying the moral principles of the soul against 
its innate love of happiness, placing in antagonism 
what are now intimately and inseparably joined, and 
thus removing at once what are now the strongest 
incentives to virtue and consequent well-being. Indeed, 
we can have no clearer and more certain indication 
that benevolence constitutes a leading trait in the 
divine character, than the fact we are now considering, 
that he has actually constituted his moral creatures in 
such a way that duty and happiness shall with them 
be ever concomitant ; that the moral nature shall 
approve of that which the divine law requires; that the 
ways of virtue are ever found to be ways of pleasant- 
ness, and all her paths peace. In truth, the whole 
phenomena of conscience evince most clearly to the 
observant and thoughtful mind the highest regard, on 
the part of the Creator, for the well-being of man, 
which is only another expression for the highest and 
purest benevolence. 

It would seem to be, then, the great advantage of 



286 



STUDIES IN THEOLOGY. 



the argument now under discussion, as compared with 
those previously named, that it brings into bold relief 
and places in a clear, strong light, the moral character 
of God ; in which respect the material or physical 
argument is, it must be confessed, in a measure de- 
fective. We can show, from the arrangements of the 
material world, the power, the wisdom, the skill of the 
mighty builder. But what is there in external nature 
to demonstrate his righteousness, his justice, his good- 
ness ? Indications of these attributes, doubtless, there 
may be ; hardly, as we think, proofs. The physical 
structure of the shark affords as clear evidence of the 
skill of the Creator, as do the anatomy and organization 
of the dolphin or the flying fish. It would not, how- 
ever, On the whole, be a fortunate selection from which 
to argue the divine benevolence, inasmuch as the various 
and truly skilful arrangements and contrivances, which 
admirably conduce to the welfare of the creature in 
question, seem not, on the whole, so well adapted, 
either in theory or practice, to the safety and happiness 
of his fellow creatures. Indeed, the great palpable 
fact that suffering seems to have entered as an element 
into the very plan and structure — the first draft, so 
to speak — of this whole system of things, reaching 
back beyond the history and existence of man himself 
on the globe ; that the earliest records and relics of 
animal life and organization, in whatever form of 
being, and in whatever distant and otherwise unknown 
epoch of our earth's history, arc records and traces 
also of the physical suffering with which that existence 
terminated and that life passed away ; this, we say, is 
a problem not as yet duly pondered, it would seem, by 
those who find no difficulty in making out a complete 



NATURAL THEOLOGY. 



287 



idea and demonstration of God from external nature. 
The truth is, as we are strongly inclined to believe, that 
while the material universe furnishes abundant proof 
of the existence and natural perfections of the Deity, 
his moral attributes are fully exhibited only in the 
moral realm. And this is, in fact, precisely what we 
might reasonably have anticipated. 

To sum up in few words what has been advanced 
in the present essay : We have sought to ascertain 
definitely what it is which natural theology has to do, 
and the best way of doing it ; in other words, the true 
province and the true methods of the science. The 
things to be done we find to be these two: First, to bring 
forward from the existing universe something which 
we can clearly show to be an effect ; and then to show 
that this effect is such as to require for its producing 
cause all that which we include in the idea of Deity. 
For the working of this twofold problem, we find an 
array of arguments drawn from these several sources 
— metaphysics, physics, the department of mind, the 
department of morals. Of these, it is in the power of 
physics only, and not of metaphysics, if the preceding 
observations and reasonings are correct, to show clearly 
that the present things had a beginning ; in other 
words, that the world itself, the universe of which we 
form a part, is in truth an effect. Nor will physics, 
even, as commonly employed, do this. The fitness of 
means to ends, the various instances which we find in 
the material universe of what we call design and what 
seems to us like arrangement and contrivance, do not 
show this ; inasmuch as we must first know that these 
arrangements themselves have had a beginning, and are 
not uncaused and self-existent qualities of an uncaused 



288 



STUDIES IN THEOLOGY. 



and self-existent substance. What we see of this sort 
in the universe may be sufficient to suggest the idea of 
a God, and render it altogether probable that such a 
being exists ; may, indeed, convince most minds that 
such is the fact ; may greatly strengthen and corrob- 
orate the evidence derived from other sources ; but 
cannot clearly and certainly establish that which we 
seek to know. In order to establish this point on a 
sure basis, we must call to our aid a class of sciences 
hitherto much neglected, and even regarded with dis- 
trust by theological writers, but which, we believe, will 
yet be found, not harmless merely, not serviceable 
merely, but indispensable, it may be, to the exact and 
clear exhibition, and sure foundation, of the truths 
involved in natural theology. 

This point established, that the present order of 
things is not without beginning, and the way is clear. 
Reason assures us that if there be a beginning, there 
must be also a beginner ; if an effect, a cause ; and 
that, if we go back far enough, we must come at last 
to that which is the source of all other being, itself 
uncaused, self-existent, eternal. This is God, but yet 
not the whole of God, not the complete idea that we 
form of Deity. And here the argument from design 
falls into place, and enables us to infer that the builder 
of this goodly frame possesses intelligence, power, 
wisdom, skill, if not absolutely unlimited, — and of that 
we cannot be sure as yet, inasmuch as from the finite 
we cannot strictly demonstrate the infinite, — yet vast, 
and altogether beyond our power of comprehension. 
Lastly, the moral nature of man, the noblest depart- 
ment of those divine works which lie within the narrow 
circle of our vision, demonstrates to us the higher and 



NATURAL THEOLOGY. 



289 



nobler attributes of Deity — his righteousness, justice, 
and benevolence. 

These things ascertained and clearly established, 
natural theology has nothing further to do. Its work 
is accomplished. Whatever else we wish to know of 
God, we are to look for it not in his works, but in his 
word ; not creation, but revelation, is from this point 
to be our guide. 

19 



I 



290 



STUDIES IN THEOLOGY. 



NOTES. 



Note A. — Page 242. 

The argument proceeds on the supposition that if the world is 
eternal it is also independent or self-existent. It admits of question, 
however, whether this does of necessity follow. That which is self- 
existent must, indeed, be eternal, since we cannot suppose that 
which has the ground of its being in itself not to have always 
existed ; but is that which is eternal of necessity self-existent ? Is 
it not possible there may be an eternal cause, eternally producing 
effects, which effects will then be co-eternal with the cause — effects, 
but not effects produced in time; as light may be called co-eval 
with the sun from which it emanates ? 

This is a distinction actually made by the ancient philosophers. 
Thus both Plato and Aristotle seem to have regarded the world as 
eternal, but by no means as self-existing. On the contrary, they 
clearly held it to be the work of an intelligent being — a creation, 
though not in time. " That is," says Dr. Clarke, 1 " that the will 
of God and his power of acting being necessarily as eternal as his 
essence, the effects of that will and power might be supposed 
co-eval to the will and power themselves, in the same manner as 
light would eternally proceed from the sun, or a shadow from the 
the interposed body, or an impression from an impressed seal, if the 
respective causes of these effects were supposed eternal." Accord- 
ing to this view, it would not be necessary to establish the non- 
eternity of the world in order to establish the existence of a first 
cause. 

Closely analogous to this view is the idea of eternal generation, 
as held so widely by the older theologians — the Son proceeding 
fromfche Father, but not in time — co-eternal with the eternal cause. 



i Demonstration, etc., p. 35. 



NATURAL THEOLOGY. 



291 



Note B. — Page 247. 

No doubt the dependence of part on part and generation on 
generation, naturally suggests the dependence of the series as a 
■whole, and leads the mind to look for some ground of being, some 
originating cause, out of the series itself. This we would by no 
means deny ; and that the mind naturally thus reasons is certainly 
a presumption in favor of the conclusion thus reached. But that is 
not to the point and purpose of the present argument. The thing 
to be shown, and which the argument now under discussion attempts 
to show, is not the probability or improbability of an infinite series of 
finite and dependent causes, but the utter impossibility of such a 
thing — that the very supposition of such a series involves contra- 
diction and absurdity. And this, we suspect, is more than can be 
shown. 

But even if it were shown, the argument in question is as far as 
ever from proving the non-eternity of the world. For even granting 
all that is now claimed, that is, that a series of, successive and de- 
pendent parts cannot be infinitely extended, but must have out of 
itself some ground of being on which the whole series depends, there 
still remains the possible supposition that this independent and 
original something, external to the series and the ground of its 
being, may still be some principle inherent in nature itself — some 
law or force, eternally existing and eternally active, giving rise to 
the various successive forms and orders of animal and vegetable 
organizations. Not everything in nature is included in the series 
of successive and dependent parts. There are laws and forces that 
for aught we know may have been in existence and in action from 
eternity. As from eternity it has been true that two and two are 
four, so from eternity it may have been true that some grand uni- 
versal law has existed, governing the relation of every particle of 
matter in the universe to every other, in obedience to which law 
the successive forms of life and organization have appeared on the 
earth, and disappeared to be followed by other generations in 
endless succession. Thus, while every part is dependent, and the 
series itself dependent, having the ground of its being in something 
out of itself, that something is nevertheless not external to nature 
itself, but only to the series of which it is the ground and cause of 
being. That such is not the case — that the independent and eternal 
ground of being is not inherent in or any part, principle, or law 



292 



STUDIES IX THEOLOGY. 



of nature itself, — it is not for any method of a priori or metaphysical 
reasoning to show, but must be shown, if at all, by calling to our 
aid the facts of science. 

Note C. — Page 257. 

The present article is intended simply as a critique on the common 
methods of argument in natural theology. Its object is to ascertain 
the value of those methods, their strength and their weakness, and 
thus to indicate the true method of procedure, rather than to pre- 
sent in full the argument as thus constructed. This was not 
proposed. 

The evidence for the non-eternity of the world, as furnished by 
science, may be thus stated in brief. 

a. No evidence in nature itself to the contrary — no appearance 
of being unproduced and eternal, but the contrary. 

b. General conviction of the race that it had a beginning — con- 
viction with which all tradition and history concur. 

c. Facts go to show that the present order of things had a beginning. 
Geology shows it — carries us back to the time when successively 
the various forms of animal and vegetable life disappear, and finally 
all trace of organization is lost ; thus clearly indicating that there 
is a point further on in the region of time when the world itself 
began to be. Astronomy shows it — admits the existence of a 
resisting medium in space which must ultimately impede the move- 
ment of the planets, and bring them in course of time to a stand- 
still. Millions of ages might be required for this result: but still 
the fact that it has not occurred shows that the world is not eternal. 

d. Science shows a progressive order of creation — certain great 
eras or epochs, distinctly marked, successive and progressive, ad- 
vancing from lower to higher forms of life and organization. This, 
of course, implies the non-eternity of the present cosmos. 

e. The same thing is further evident from the occasional interrup- 
tions and destructive changes which science shows to have taken 
place in the order of nature, followed by successive renewals or 
creations. This, moreover, cannot be the work of a law inherent 
in nature itself. 

Note D. — Page 271. 

It is by no means the intention of the present article to set aside 
or at all diminish the real value of the argument from design, which 



NATURAL THEOLOGY. 



293 



holds an important place in natural theology, but rather to give it 
its due and proper weight by assigning it its true position. Whether 
mere facts of order and adaptation in themselves prove design, and 
so a beginning and a beginner, may well admit of question. That 
there is nothing absurd or inconsistent in supposing them uncaused, 
is evident from the fact that whenever in our thought we reach an 
ultimate cause, we must of necessity admit this order and adapta- 
tion to be characteristic of that cause ; they exist, then, in that 
case, as themselves unproduced. On the supposition, therefore, of 
the materialist and the rationalist, that nature is itself ultimate, these 
marks of order and adaptation not only may but do exist uncaused. 

But where these facts are, and can be shown to be, effects — pro- 
duced arrangements — that they are the work of an intelligent and 
designing cause is a conclusion which forces itself irresistibly upon 
the mind. An effect which exhibits evidence of order, arrangement, 
adaptation to given ends, exhibits also evidence of design, and must 
not only have had a cause, but an intelligent and contriving cause. 
Now this is precisely what can be shown in respect to the order and 
arrangements of the natural world — that they are effects, produced 
arrangements, and so must have had an intelligent producer. And 
this is precisely the point in the line of defence where the argument 
from design becomes of great value. The true function and worth 
of the argument, properly handled, is not to show the existence of a 
cause, for any event or effect shows that ; nor yet of a first cause, 
for that is admitted by both theist and materialist ; but an intelligent 
first cause, adapting and contriving — something more than a mere 
force or law of nature. These facts of order and arrangement, says 
the materialist, which abound in nature, and which are, as you 
claim, the effects of some producing cause, may they not be pro- 
duced by some force or some law inherent in nature itself f Such is 
the hypothesis of the rationalist and materialist. To this we reply : 
They are effects of such a nature as require for their production not 
merely a cause, but an intelligent cause, working consciously and 
intentionally to a given end ; and a law of nature is not such a 
cause, works not in that manner. A law that shall produce such 
effects requires itself a producer. The contrivance and intelligence, 
not being in the law itself, must lie back of it, and be itself the ulti- 
mate cause both of the law and its results. 

Such we conceive to be the true place and province of the argu- 
ment from design. 



294 



STUDIES IN THEOLOGY. 



The fault in the argument from design, as that argument is usually 
presented, is forcibly stated by Mahan in his recent treatise on 
Natural Theology: 

" The syllogism referred to is this : 

" Marks of design, that is, facts of order, imply an intelligent 
cause of such facts. 

" The universe presents such facts. 

" Therefore the universe has an intelligent author. 

" Every one, on a moment's reflection, will perceive that the 
minor premise of this syllogism presents an absolutely universally 
admitted truth. No one, whether he is a theist or an anti-theist, 
does or can doubt, or was ever known to deny, that facts of order 
do exist in the universe around us. The major premise, on the 
other hand, is denied by all anti-theists of every school. In this 
denial, also, they are sustained by many of the first thinkers among 

the theists On the conduct of the argument, also, we have 

this one very singular and, as far as our knowledge extends, un- 
exampled phenomenon. The major or disputed premise is very 
seldom, aside from a few illustrations, argued at all ; while the 
minor, the universally admitted one, is argued as if the whole issue 
depended exclusively upon sustaining its validity. The theistic syl- 
logism, therefore, as commonly stated and argued, presents the 
following very singular violations of all the laws of true scientific 
procedure, to wit, a syllogism with a disputed major and a univer- 
sally admitted minor premise ; while the former is assumed as a 
universally admitted principle, and the latter argued as the only 
disputed premise. Who can wonder that even the Christian student, 
when traversing such works as that of Paley, begins, it may be for 
the first time in his life, to doubt the possibility of valid proof of the 
fundamental article of all religion, the being of God ? Nothing higher 
can reasonably be expected from such a method" (pp. 106, 107). 



II. 



THE DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITY. 

The attention of the religious community has been 
very generally drawn of late to the long-agitated, much- 
disputed, much-calumniated doctrine of the Trinity. 
Recent discussions have given new interest and impor- 
tance to the subject — a subject which can never be 
without interest, indeed, to the reflecting mind, but 
upon which, at the present moment, the most diverse 
and conflicting opinions are found to prevail among 
those who are at once the sincere friends and the 
earnest champions of truth. By some the divine tri- 
personality, by others the divine unity, is regarded as 
the element of chief importance, and is earnestly con- 
tended for, as in danger of being overlooked. The 
minds of men are inquiring more earnestly now than 
at any time, perhaps, for the last fifty years, for some 
definite, true, and solid ground of belief touching these 
matters. A patient and careful re-examination of the 
whole subject seems to be demanded. We hope that 
the present article will contribute in some degree to 
this result, at least by inducing the reader to enter for 
himself upon such re-examination. 

The Scriptures in the plainest terms assert the unity 
of God, and as plainly do they ascribe divinity to Jesus 
Christ and the Holy Spirit. Nowhere, however, do they 

1 From the New Englander, Vol. viii. No. 39, February, 1850. 
295 



296 



STUDIES IN THEOLOGY, 



put these things together by way of explanation. Nor 
do they offer any solution of the apparent discrepancy. 

The moment we undertake to do this for ourselves, 
we find ourselves in difficulty — a difficulty which 
seems insurmountable, and of which we become only 
the more thoroughly and painfully conscious by all our 
efforts to overcome it. 

For any such investigation, the Scriptures afford us 
• no other aid, than simply to furnish the correct data 
which must lie at the basis of all our reasoning. This, 
however important and even indispensable in itself, 
does not remove the labor or the difficulty of the 
undertaking. 

Such being the state of the case, — the subject one 
involved in difficulty, and the Scriptures furnishing no 
direct information or assistance with regard to it, — 
shall we pass the matter by as something quite inex- 
plicable and beyond our reach, which it is of no use 
for us to investigate, and which it is even presumptuous 
for us to attempt ? Shall we regard the silence of 
Scripture as an indication that God does not design to 
unfold this mystery of his being to us creatures of 
yesterday, who know nothing ? 

So some may possibly conclude. And yet it would 
seem as if every man who reads the Bible, and medi- 
tates on what he reads, must sometimes put these two 
things together in his mind, — the unity of God, the 
divinity of Jesus Christ and of the Spirit, — and com- 
pare them, and ask himself how these truths consist 
with each other, and seek in his thoughts some solu- 
tion of the problem, some explanation of the apparent 
discrepancy. Every reflecting man will do this. Some 
method of meeting this difficulty, some theory respect- 



THE DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITY. 



297 



ing the matter, he will be likely to have ; and if it is 
not a right, then it will surely be a wrong theory. For 
centuries this subject has been the fruitful source of 
error, discussion, contention, heresy, sect, in the Chris- 
tian world. This only shows, not the folly and fruit- 
lessness of thinking on these things at all, but the 
importance of thinking clearly and rightly on them. 

The proper inquiry would seem to be, What view of 
this matter is, on the whole, most in accordance with 
the teaching of Scripture ? In the absence Of any 
direct, positive testimony on the point, what may be 
fairly and legitimately inferred, from what the Bible 
does affirm respecting the Divine Being ? 

The subject is one which should, however, be ap- 
proached with awe. It is no theme for proud and vain 
philosophizing or self-confident speculation. He who 
approaches it should come humbly, and put off the shoe 
from his foot ; for he is to tread on sacred ground. 
Reverently let him come, as Moses drew near the bush 
that burned, as the elders of Israel approached the 
mount that quaked, and beheld from afar the God of 
their fathers. 

The theme before us does not properly involve the 
discussion of the divine unity, nor the true and proper 
divinity of the Son and Spirit; but, assuming these 
doctrines to be clearly taught in the Scriptures, and 
the proof of them already before the mind, the specific 
inquiry then arises, How do these two things consist 
with each other ? It is just at this point that we meet 
the doctrine of the trinity, properly speaking. Just 
here all our inquiries and all our difficulties begin. 

There are two summary methods of disposing of the 
whole subject — methods not as satisfactory, however, 



298 



STUDIES IN THEOLOGY. 



as they are summary. One is, to deny that there is 
any room for inquiry or reasoning in the case — to 
resolve the whole subject into mystery, and there leave 
it, thus shutting out all investigation. Mystery, doubt- 
less, there is, pertaining to the subject of the divine 
existence ; some things respecting it not known, and 
not to be known by us. Possibly, however, the mystery 
may arise, in part, from our own want of clear percep- 
tion, and definite statement. The fault may be in 
great measure our own. Mystery is one thing, and 
mystification is another. We do well to see to it that 
there is not in our mode of treating the subject some- 
thing of the latter element, along with the former. 
Mystery is one thing, and contradiction in terms is 
another. How are we to show that we are not justly 
chargeable with the latter ? If we have too much 
reverence for the Scriptures to admit for a moment 
that they contain contradictions, there may be minds 
less reverent, and it becomes us so to state our belief, 
and so to interpret our Bibles, that these less reverent 
minds shall not find in our statements what they can 
fairly construe into, and what to them shall really 
seem to imply and amount to, absolute contradictions. 
It is not sufficient to make statements of which we do 
not ourselves see the consistency, and then dismiss the 
whole matter with the remark that the subject is one 
involved in mystery. 

The other method is to deny the premises in order 
to clear the difficulty — to cut what we cannot untie. 
Equally unsatisfactory and unphilosophical is this 
method. The Scriptures teach the divinity of the Son 
and of the Spirit as clearly as they teach the unity of 
God. They attach as much importance to the one 



THE DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITY. 



299 



doctrine as to the other. It would never have oc- 
curred, probably, to any one receiving the Scriptures, 
to doubt or call in question the former truth, were it 
not for the apparent difficulty of reconciling that with 
the latter. No candid mind will be satisfied, however, 
with any such method of meeting the difficulty as that 
now under consideration. For the question at once 
arises, What right have we to sacrifice either of these 
doctrines to the other, inasmuch as they rest each 
upon the same authority, and seem to be supported 
each by the same kind and degree of evidence ? And 
if either is to be sacrificed to the other, which shall it 
be ? What reason is there for preferring one to the 
other ? What right have we to say this shall stand, 
and not that ? One has no more right to start with 
the doctrine of the divine unity, and say, " God is one, 
therefore Jesus Christ cannot be God," than another 
has to take as his starting-point the true and proper 
divinity of Christ, and say, " Therefore God is not one, 
and those passages which seem to teach this are to be 
taken in a modified sense." Indeed, if one were driven 
to take either of these positions, the latter certainly 
would be preferable ; for the passages which teach the 
unity of God are neither so many in number, nor so 
plain, direct, and positive, in their language, as those 
which teach the divinity of Jesus Christ 

Rejecting, then, at once, such outside and summary 
methods of dealing with the subject, no sooner do we 
set ourselves fairly and earnestly to meet the case, 
than we perceive that there are these three distinct 
and essential elements to be kept in view, compared, 
and harmonized — the divine unity; the individuality 
of the Father, the Son, and the Spirit ; the divinity of 



300 



STUDIES IN THEOLOGY. 



each. That only can be the true method of stating 
and explaining the doctrine of the divine existence, 
which shall place these three elements in harmony 
with each other in their just and due proportions, per- 
mitting no one of them to be lost sight of, no one of 
them to stand in real or even apparent contradiction to 
either of the others. 

It is perfectly obvious, from this outline or analysis 
of the subject, that nothing would be easier than so to 
state the doctrine of the divine existence as to involve 
real and irreconcilable contradiction ; nay, that without 
great care and precision in the use of terms it will 
inevitably be so stated. If you make the unity of the 
Supreme Being to be absolute, strict, numerical unity, 
and at the same time admit the distinct individuality 
(in the strict and proper sense of the word) of the Son 
and the Spirit, then you cannot consistently affirm that 
the Son and the Spirit are truly and properly divine, 
but only in some secondary and modified sense ; and 
to assert their divinity in the strict and absolute sense 
is, in such a case, absolute self-contradiction. It is to 
affirm and to deny with the same breath. If, on the 
other hand, you start with the absolute and true 
divinity of Christ and of the Spirit, and also maintain 
their distinct, separate individuality, in the ordinary 
sense of that term, you can no longer consistently 
maintain the strict numerical unity of the Godhead, 
but only a specific unity or homogeneousness of the 
three divine persons. 

For want of care on this point, and of a well-defined 
perception of the relations of these three elements to 
each other, much confusion has arisen ; and to this 
source, also, many of the objections may be traced 



THE DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITY. 



301 



which, not without reason, it must "be confessed, have 
at various times been urged against the doctrine of 
the Trinity thus stated. 

It is further evident that, in order to a clear, con- 
sistent statement of the doctrine, some one of these 
three elementary ideas must be somewhat modified so 
as to coincide with the others. Every one who under- 
takes to explain and elucidate this subject feels the 
necessity of this, and virtually, whether consciously or 
not, proceeds on this principle. It is worthy of note 
that the various theories and opinions which at any 
time in the lapse of centuries, since the matter came 
under discussion in the Christian church, have been 
proposed with reference to this doctrine, have all been 
so many efforts to solve the problem in this way, namely, 
by modifying some one of these three distinctive and 
essential elements. This is, in fact, the only way in 
which it was possible to proceed. All such theories and 
proposed methods, however many and various, may 
therefore be reduced essentially to three; and it will aid 
us in our present investigation to be able thus to grasp by 
a few threads, as it were, the whole history of the doc- 
trine. Let us then, for a moment, pursue this analysis. 

If we suppose the first and second of these essential 
elements to be retained in their strict and full sense, 
and the third to be modified so as to meet them, 
we obtain the following statement : God is one, abso- 
lutely, numerically one. The Son and the Spirit are 
individually and properly distinct from the Father, as 
any conscious intelligent existence is distinct from any 
other. The Father alone, therefore, is strictly and in 
the highest sense divine ; the Son and Spirit are divine 
only in a limited and modified sense. This, in its 



302 



STUDIES IN THEOLOGY. 



essential features, is the Arian theory, though much 
older than Arius. It was the theory of Origen and the 
Platonic fathers of the second and third century. If, 
on the contrary, we maintain in their integrity the 
second and third of these elements, and modify the 
first, we obtain directly the opposite view, namely, the 
Son and the Spirit are really and absolutely divine, as 
truly so, and in the same sense, as the Father. They 
possess, likewise, distinct individuality. Each thinks, 
feels, wills, acts for himself. The Father, Son, and 
Spirit are one, therefore, not in the absolute and strict 
sense, but only specifically, as Paul and John are one, 
— that is, in sentiment, feeling, principle, etc., — or else 
one by reason of partaking one and the same nature. 
This may be called the tritheistic theory. The early 
Christian fathers seem generally to have taken essen- 
tially this view. For two or three centuries it was the 
prevailing orthodox view. It entered largely into the 
discussions of the Nicene Council. Many modern trin- 
itarians would also fall into this class were their views 
definitely stated and closely analyzed. 

If, now, we retain in their strict sense and form the 
first and the third of these elements, and so shape the 
second as to coincide, we obtain the following statement 
of the doctrine. God is strictly, absolutely one. The 
Son and Spirit are really and absolutely divine. But 
they are not individually distinct from the Father, as 
separate existences. Their individuality is not that of 
three men or three angels, or three distinct intelligent 
beings of any sort ; but they constitute, in fact, one be- 
ing, and possess individuality only in a limited and 
modified sense. 

We have now the theory which in its essential fea- 



THE DOCTRINE OF THE TRIXITT. 



303 



tures, though with various modifications, has been gen 
erally held in modern times by orthodox trinitarians ; 
substantially the theory of Calvin and his disciples. 
Its distinctive characteristic is a modification of the 
element of individuality. "While it maintains the full 
and absolute divinity of the Son and of the Spirit, it 
holds also the strict, absolute unity of God — that he is 
one in essence or being — numerically, and not merely 
specifically one. -It admits at the same time a distinc- 
tion to exist in the nature of the Godhead, which 
distinction — for want of a better name, and in the 
absence of any word that in the poverty of human 
language and human conception can exactly describe 
or define what man does but imperfectly comprehend 
— it terms hypostasis, or person; a distinction not 
clearly understood by us, but the existence of which is 
plainly revealed ; a distinction existing from eternity , 
but developed in time and in the scheme of redemption, 
by the incarnation and mission of the Logos, and by 
the office of the Holy Spirit in renewing and sanctifying 
the hearts of men. 

Such is substantially the modern Trinitarian theory. 
While it admits a certain distinction eternally existing 
in the nature of the Godhead, to which it applies the 
term hypostasis, or subsistence, or person, it does not 
for a moment attach to this distinction the idea of so 
many separate individual existences. Xot in any such 
sense does it employ the word person. Calvin himself 
is careful distinctly to disavow any such idea. 1 The 
three hypostases, subsistences, or persons are not three 
distinct spiritual existences, three minds, acting, de- 
vising, willing, each for itself ; they denote simply 

1 See note (A.) at the end of this Article. 



304 



STUDIES IN THEOLOGY. 



such a distinction as can belong to a Toeing strictly and 
numerically one. Just what that distinction is, just 
what relation these hypostases hold to each other and to 
that divine nature in which they subsist, it is neither for 
this theory nor any other to define. Neither Calvin has 
attempted this, nor any other man in his right mind. 

The characteristic feature, as we have observed, of 
this theory, as distinguished from others, is a limitation 
of the element of individuality. We have but to carry 
out this principle, however, to its extreme, and we 
strike another of those ancient and diverging paths, 
along which the human mind has wandered in its 
anxious but erring search for truth. Press this limi- 
tation so far as virtually to deny the existence of any 
personal distinction in the Deity prior to the manifesta- 
tions made of himself in time and to man, and we 
stand at once on the old Monarchical, or, more strictly 
speaking, the Patri-Passian, ground. Praxeas, Noetius, 
and Sabellius went that way. While they held the 
supreme divinity of Christ, they denied his distinct 
personal subsistence as the Logos prior to the incarna- 
tion. The Deity, ever one and the same in all the 
manifestations of himself to man, now assumes the 
character and office of Father, now of Son, and now 
of Holy Spirit. These are not distinctions eternally 
existing in the nature of the Deity, but simply modal 
developments, the forms under which he passes before 
men ; like the successive transformations of Vishnu in 
the Indian mythology. Sabellius speaks of fila viro- 
o-racns, by which he means person or subject, and rpia 
irpoawira, meaning by the latter term, forms, manifesta- 
tions, or works. The divinity of MWa?, embodying 
itself in the Logos or Son, is not distinct from, but 



THE DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITY. 



305 



identical with, the Movds, embodying itself under the 
form of the Spirit. The whole Deity goes into each ; 
and back of these impersonations, and prior to them, 
there is in the divine nature itself no distinction of 
persons. 

Diverse as this scheme is from the proper trinitarian 
theory, it has nevertheless in common with it these 
two things ; it starts from the same point, and pro- 
ceeds in the same direction. In common with the 
other, it seeks to solve the problem of the Trinity by a 
limitation, not of the unity, nor yet of the divinity, but 
of the individuality of the three. It falls, therefore, 
into the same general classification of doctrines. 

We find, then, as the result of this analysis, that the 
various methods of stating the doctrine of the Trinity, 
and of reasoning upon it, reduce themselves essentially 
to these three — a modified unity, a modified divinity, 
a modified individuality. 

We are now prepared to proceed with some advan- 
tage in the investigation. The question is : Which of 
these is the right method ? Which best elucidates the 
subject? Which best accords with the general spirit 
and teaching of the sacred oracles ? The field of 
inquiry contracts itself within these narrow limits. 
Two simple questions, in fact, cover the whole ground. 

I. Is that divinity which the Scriptures ascribe to the 
Son and the Spirit in any sense limited ; or is it abso- 
lute and supreme, like that of the Father ? 

II. Do they represent the Son and Spirit as pos- 
sessing individuality in the sense of distinct spiritual 
existence, separate from that of the Father, or only in 
some limited and secondary sense, such as may consist 
with strict numerical unity of being in the Godhead ? 

20 



306 



STUDIES IN THEOLOGY. 



These questions fairly answered, we can no longer 
be in doubt as to the proper method of viewing and 
stating the doctrine of the Trinity. 

It will be sufficient for our present purpose to con- 
duct these inquiries with reference simply to the Son, 
without extending them further, inasmuch as the Scrip- 
tures are more full and explicit on this point, and 
inasmuch, also, as the bearing of such an examination 
on the subject before us will be equally decisive in the 
one case as in the other. If the Scriptures teach the 
supreme and absolute divinity of Christ, then the first 
of the three methods or theories cannot be correct. 
If they teach the distinct, separate individuality of the 
Son, then the last method cannot be the right one. 

It is evident, moreover, that these inquiries should 
be made with reference not to Jesus Christ in his 
mediatorial character and earthly condition, the God- 
man, but rather to the Logos, existing with the Father 
before the world was, in his original and proper nature 
and condition ; since, by the assumption of the media- 
torial office, and by his incarnation in order to that, 
there accrued necessarily to the Son both an individ- 
uality and a dependence altogether human, and not at 
all pertaining to his own proper nature, and which 
therefore ought not to be introduced as elements into 
any inquiry respecting the mode of the divine existence 
— a subject which lies infinitely beyond and above 
these adventitious circumstances. Our inquiries relate- 
not to the divine man of Nazareth, the man Christ 
Jesus, but to that divine nature which became incarnate 
in the person of Christ, and which in its pre-existent 
state sustained certain relations to the Father, — was 
or was not individually distinct from him, — was or 



THE DOCTRIXE OF THE TRINITY. 



307 



was not absolutely equal with him in all the attributes 
of deity. 

I. Is that divinity which the Scriptures ascribe to 
the Son as pre-existent in any sense limited, or is it 
absolute and equal to that of the Father. 

A thorough exposition of the various passages which 
bear upon this question is of course beyond the limits 
of a single article. A brief survey is all that can be 
attempted. For the sake of convenience, we shall 
arrange the various passages into classes as we proceed. 

1. Passages which apply to Christ the unqualified 
appellation 0eo? or o 0eo?. 

These are not decisive in the present inquiry ; for, 
although they imply divine honor in some sense, yet, 
as it is possible the term may be employed in a second- 
ary or figurative sense, they cannot be appealed to as 
necessarily denoting absolute and supreme divinity. 

2. Passages which ascribe to Christ the work of 
creation. 

1 Cor. viii. 6 : " by whom are all things " (8i ov) ; 
Heb. i. 3 : " by whom he made the worlds " ; Col. i. 
16, 17 : " all things were created by him and for him " 
(Sl avrov Kai els avrov) ; " and by him (ev avrwi) all 
things consist." This passage is somewhat stronger 
than the others. Yet not any of them seem decisive as 
to the question whether full and supreme divinity, like 
that of the Father, belongs to the Son ; for it is cer- 
tainly not impossible to conceive of the power to create 
and to govern being conferred and exercised instru- 
mentally — an idea which the form of expression, geni- 
tive with preposition Bia, seems to indicate. 

3. Passages which speak of divine power and honor 
being conferred on the Son by the Father. 



308 



STUDIES IN THEOLOGY. 



Such are Heb. i. 2 : " whom he hath appointed heir 
of all things," and in the following verses, " sat down 
on the right hand of the majesty on high," — i.e. in 
the place of honor and power next the highest, — 
" being made so much better than the angels," etc. 
Also Eph. i. 20 : " and set him at his own right hand in 
the heavenly places, far above all principality and 
power and might and dominion," etc. ; " and hath put 
all things under his feet," etc. Also 1 Pet. hi. 22 : 
" Who is gone into heaven, and is on the right hand of 
God, angels and authorities and powers being made 
subject unto him." 

These passages, and those of like import, while they 
ascribe to the Son an eminence and honor peculiarly 
divine, do, nevertheless, plainly convey the idea of 
subordination in some sense to a higher power. His 
seat is next that of the majesty on high ; the honor and 
dominion are conferred upon him ; he is appointed to 
them. These passages would be decisive of the ques- 
tion before us, were it not that they all manifestly 
refer to Christ in his mediatorial character, the risen, 
ascended, exalted Redeemer, and not to the pre-existent 
One, the Logos, such as he was before his incarnation 
and voluntary humiliation. They cannot, therefore, 
according to the principle just laid down, be admitted 
as bearing upon the question before us. The inquiry 
is not whether the man Christ Jesus, the Saviour upon 
earth, or the Saviour risen and ascended, is in any 
sense subordinate to the Father ; that is conceded by 
all ; but whether this subordination pertains to his 
original nature and proper condition, or is only as- 
sumed along with the vesture of humanity and the 
mediatorial office. This is a question which the pas- 



THE DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITY. 



809 



sages now under consideration do not meet, and were 
never designed to meet. They belong to the same 
class with those which speak of the Father as sending 
the Son, of the Son as being sent, and as doing the will 
of him who sent him, of the Father as being greater 
than the Son, etc., etc. ; all which relate to the Messiah 
as such, and have no bearing, therefore, on the present 
question. 

4. More to the purpose, though not perhaps altogether 
conclusive, is a class of passages in which the Son is 
directly compared with the Father. 

In Col. i. 15 he is termed " the image of the invisible 
God." . This is a strong expression, but not decisive ; 
for a child may be said to be the very image of its 
father, and yet not in all respects his equal. Indeed, 
the very comparison suggests some sort of inequality ; 
for we compare the less with the greater ; we liken him 
whom we would honor to one whose reputation and 
dignity are still greater. In the present instance, it is 
not quite clear that the reference is not to Christ as 
Mediator, God manifest or revealed, in distinction from 
the " invisible God," or God concealed. The same 
remark applies to Col. i. 19 : " It pleased the Father 
that in him should all fulness dwell " ; and also to 
Col. ii. 9 : " In him dwelleth all the fulness of the God- 
head bodily." These are strong expressions. They 
mean that whatever pertains to the Godhead pertains 
also to Christ. When we compare them, however, 
with Eph. i. 23, in which the same expression is 
applied to the church, — " which is his body, the ful- 
ness of him who filleth all in all," — we hesitate to 
ascribe to them the sense of absolute and supreme 
divinity. For if the language necessarily implies that 



310 



STUDIES IN THEOLOGY. 



idea in the one case, why not in the other? If the 
fulness of the Godhead dwelling bodily in Christ con- 
stitutes him strictly and in the highest sense a divine 
being, then why does not the fulness of him who filleth 
all in all, pertaining as it does to the church, constitute 
that equally and in the same sense divine ? 

Other passages there are, however, in which the com- 
parison of the Son with the Father seems to be made 
with special reference to the Logos as pre-existent ; 
which are therefore more decisive in their bearing upon 
the present discussion, for example, Phil. ii. 6, where 
we meet with the following expressions : " who being 
in the form of God" (pop^f) Qeov), and "equal with 
God" (lea 6ew). If, with the earlier commentators 
and the Fathers, we regard fiopcf)i] as synonymous in 
this connection with <f>u<ri$ and oiWa, the nature and 
essence of the Deity, the passage becomes conclusive as 
to the subject of our present inquiry. That the word 
is thus used by Greek authors there can be no doubt. 
Whether it is so used in the present instance, or 
whether it refers to the condition rather ftian to the 
nature of Deity, admits, however, of question. As 
to the latter clause of the verse, whether, with most 
expositors, ancient and modern, we take it to mean, 
" did not think it any assumption, or robbing God of 
his glory, to place himself on a footing and equality 
with the Father," a sense which both the context and 
the genius of the language seem to require ; or whether, 
with some critics of note, we interpret the sentence 
thus : " did not regard equality with the Father as a 
great prize, a thing to be eagerly coveted ; " in either 
case, this, at least, seems to be implied, that the Son 
might justly, and without claiming anything more than 



THE DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITY. 



311 



his own due, have assumed or retained equality with 
the Father. And if it be contended that this equality 
was one not of nature but of condition, — an equality 
of glory and honor, — still the question arises, Why 
and whence this equality of condition, if there were 
not also, lying back of that, and as the ground of it, 
an equality of nature ? Whence the propriety of one 
who was really inferior to God, sharing in this way the 
divine honor and glory, and being in this respect equal 
to Jehovah ? On the whole, and whatever interpreta- 
tion be fairly put upon the words, the passage must be 
regarded as of very great weight in the present investi- 
gation, if not, indeed, conclusive. 

Closely related to this is Heb. i. 3 : " brightness of his 
glory, and express image of his person " (^apaKrrjp tt)<? 
viroaiaaews), to which essentially the same remarks 
will apply which have been made with respect to the 
preceding passage. When we remember that vTrocrracrl^ 
in this connection denotes not person, — a sense alto- 
gether foreign to the word until the controversy of the 
fourth century, — but substance, being, the relation 
thus expressed becomes a very intimate one ; the Son 
is the stamp, the very impress (xapafcrrjp) of the Father's 
essence, representing it as the impression represents 
the seal. Equality of nature and attributes would 
seem to be implied by such expressions ; and if, with 
the ancient and many modern expositors, we regard the 
passage as relating to the pre-existent Logos, it is cer- 
tainly of no little weight as respects the present inquiry ; 
and yet, on the whole, it may be regarded as question- 
able, to say the least, whether it has such reference. 

The class of passages now cited is certainly incon- 
sistent with the Socinian theory, but not necessarily so 



312 



STUDIES IN THEOLOGY. 



with the view of the Nicene Council, that Christ is God 
of God, Light of Light, deriving his existence eternally 
from the Father. Nor is it totally inconsistent even 
with the Arian idea, that he is not merely of derived 
but of created existence. It is certainly possible to 
suppose that the Father might impart existence to one 
who should be constituted the very brightness of his 
glory, and the express image of his person. Indeed, 
these are the very passages to which the Nicene fathers 
constantly appeal in support of their view. 

Setting aside, then, those passages which fall under 
the divisions already named, as somewhat doubtful in 
their application to the present inquiry, or at least not 
altogether decisive of the question before us, there still 
remain two classes of Scripture texts to which these 
doubts do not pertain. 

These -are: 1. Those which apply to Christ the term 
God, in connection with some qualifying phrase which 
fixes and defines the meaning of the term, ascribing to 
him either creative power, or supreme dominion, or 
some other attribute or act of divinity. In such cases 
it is not the term, the name of Deity, alone, which has 
weight, nor yet the epithet taken by itself, but the 
name taken in connection with that epithet or qualifying 
adjunct. 

Such a passage is John i. 1, 3, where the assertion is 
not simply made that the Logos was God, but the 
writer goes on to define his meaning, assuring us that 
he intends by that expression none other than the 
Creator. The God who made all things is the God of 
whom he speaks. This can hardly be regarded in any 
other light than as a clear and full expression of 
divinity in the highest sense. 



THE DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITY. 



313 



Such also is Rom. ix. 5 : •" the God over all, blessed 
forever," (0 cov eVl irdvTwv 0eo<>) etc. The criticism 
which would refer these words to some other than the 
immediate antecedent 6 XpicrTos, is so manifestly un- 
fair and at variance with the established laws of con- 
struction, the usus loquendi of the Greek language, as 
hardly to need comment. 1 

Here also might be classed 1 John v. 20 : " This is 
the true God and eternal life " ; were it certain that 
the pronoun ovros refers to the immediate antecedent 
Xpcaro^, a construction which, though supported by 
eminent critics, ancient and modern, must be regarded 
as doubtful. 

The same may be said of Titus ii. 13 : " The mani- 
festation of the glory of the great God. and our Saviour 
Jesus Christ." The reference manifestly is to the final 
judgment, when Christ shall come with clouds, and 
with great glory ; and every eye shall see him, and 
they also which pierced him. The expressions " great 
God," and " our Saviour," seem both to belong to 
Jesus Christ, in this passage, thus denoting one and the 
same being ; and so the passage has been generally un- 
derstood, both in ancient and modern times. As it is 
possible however, to refer the former expression to the 
Father, in distinction from " our Saviour Jesus Christ," 
— a construction favored by some names of high au- 
thority, — it is not necessary to press it into the service 
of the present argument. 

We purposely omit in this connection the passage in 
Heb. iii. 4 : " He that built all things is God," because, 
while it manifestly refers to Christ, and implies that 
he as God is the founder of all things, still, as regards 

1 See oote (B.) at the end -of this Article. 



314 



STUDIES IN THEOLOGY. 



its connection with the context and the writer's design 
in the words, it is usually, and perhaps justly, regarded 
as somewhat obscure. 

2. We come now to those passages which apply to 
the Son words directly cited, or expressions plainly 
borrowed, from the Old Testament, which in their 
original connection manifestly refer to, and were spoken 
of, the supreme God. 

Thus John xii. 41 applies to Christ the vision of 
God's glory which Isaiah saw in the temple : " These 
things spake Esaias," etc. No one can read the passage 
as it stands in the original connection (Isa. vi.), and 
question whether it was the glory of the supreme and 
ever blessed God that the prophet beheld. 

Heb. i. 10 applies directly to Christ what in Ps. cii. 
24-27 is spoken of the supreme God : " Of old hast 

thou laid the foundations They shall perish, but 

thou shalt endure," etc. The words immediately pre- 
ceding show still more plainly to whom the psalmist 
had reference : " I said, my God, take me not away 
in the midst of my days ; thy years are throughout all 
generations." The supreme Disposer of life and death 
and all human events, the eternal and unchangeable 
One, Creator of all things, is the being addressed in 
this prayer or song. Yet the Epistle to the Hebrews 
assures us the language has reference to the Son. 

Still more striking is the application to Christ, in 
Rom. xiv. 11, of a sublime passage (Isa. xlv. 23) in 
which Jehovah declares that he alone is the proper 
object of divine worship. In the context, he enters 
into controversy with the idols of the heathen, and in 
the most earnest and emphatic manner asserts his own 
undivided claim to dominion and honor, his alone 



THE DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITY. 



315 



Divinity : " I am God ; and there is none else. I have 

sworn by myself that unto me every knee shall 

bow, every tongue shall swear." This passage, so 
lofty and fearful in its import, Paul interprets as re- 
ferring to the hour of final judgment, and quotes it in 
proof of the assertion that we are all to stand before 
the judgment-seat of Christ. His inference is, " So 
then every one of us shall give account of himself to 
God.'''' It is impossible to read the' passage as it 
stands in Isaiah, and not feel that it is the supreme 
and eternal God who is making use of this language 
respecting himself; and equally impossible to read it 
as quoted by Paul, and resist the impression that, in 
applying the language to Christ as final Judge, the 
apostle felt that he was not departing from the spirit 
and intention of the original. 

In Rev. i. 17 Christ styles himself " the first and the 
last," an expression which, if it be not borrowed from, 
is strongly suggestive of, Isa. xliv. 6 : " I am the first 
and the last ; and beside me there is no God." The 
expression as it stands in the prophecy is designed to 
convey a very strong assertion of absolute and supreme 
divinity, and the simple application of the expression 
to Christ as an epithet of honor and dignity, whether it 
be intentionally borrowed, or not, from the language 
of Jehovah, in Isaiah, is of itself decisive of the question 
before us. 

The same is true of a kindred expression, " Lord of 
lords," frequently applied to Jehovah in the Old Testa- 
ment, as, for example, Deut. x. 17, and in the New 
Testament not infrequently used with reference to 
Christ, as, for example, Rev. xvii. 14 and xix. 16 and 
1 Tim, vi. 15. 



316 



STUDIES IN THEOLOGY. 



The spirit and purport of these passages and expres- 
sions, as they stand in the Old Testament scriptures, is 
such as greatly to strengthen the argument derived 
from the use which is made of them in the New. They 
protest against, and utterly forbid, the paying divine 
honor to any but the true God. As regards several of 
them, particularly Isa. xlv. 23 and xliv. 6, this is their 
special design and import — a design which could in 
no way be more directly and palpably violated than by 
the application of these words to Christ, if he be not 
truly and in the highest sense God. They are the 
very last passages in all the Old Testament scriptures 
to admit of such an application. 

In fine (not to pursue further the examination of 
this part of the subject), when one meets in the New 
Testament such terms as the following, used in speak- 
ing of the Son, — the God who made all things; the 
God over all, blessed forever ; the great God our 
Saviour ; the true God ; the Lord of glory ; the Lord 
of lords and King of kings; the First and the Last; the 
God whose glory Isaiah saw in vision when it filled and 
shook the temple ; the God before whom we must all 
stand in judgment, and to whom every knee shall bow 
and every tongue confess, — what shall he infer but that 
Christ is, as regards his proper and higher nature, very 
God ? What expressions can convey to the human mind 
more fully than these the idea of absolute divinity ? 

As regards the testimony of the Scriptures, then, 
respecting the question now under consideration, we 
are led to the conclusion, which seems inevitable, that 
they do not teach the divinity of the Son in any modi- 
fied or secondary, but in the absolute, unqualified, and 
strict, sense ; and that, therefore, the theory which is 



THE DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITY. 



317 



based upon a virtual limitation of that divinity cannot 
be the true and correct one. 

We come now to the second of the two questions 
into which the subject divides itself; and on this point 
our examination must necessarily be brief. 

II. Do the Scriptures represent the Son as possessing 
individuality, in the sense of distinct spiritual existence, 
separate from that of the Father ; or only in some 
modified and secondary sense, such as may consist 
with strict numerical unity of essence or being in the 
Godhead ? 

And here, as before, it must be borne in mind as we 
proceed, that the inquiry relates to the pre-existent 
Christ — the Logos, — and not to the Messiah — the 
divine and human nature united in the person of Jesus 
of Nazareth, inasmuch as the latter possessed an indi- 
viduality peculiar to himself, which does not necessarily 
pertain to the divine nature of the Son in its original 
and proper state, and which is therefore altogether 
foreign to any inquiry respecting the mode of the 
divine existence in itself considered. 

Keeping in mind this distinction, and proceeding 
upon it, we shall find the passages to be very few 
which have any proper bearing upon the question 
before us. The following are the chief, if not, in fact, 
the only ones, which can be considered as in point. 

Jno. i. 1, 2 : " The word was with God The 

same was in the beginning with God " ; Heb. i. 2 : 
" By whom he made the woilds " ; Phil. ii. 5 : " Who 
being in the form of God," etc. ; Jno. xvii. 5, 24 : 
" The glory that I had with thee before the world 

was For thou lovedst me before the foundation 

of the world." 



318 



STUDIES IN THEOLOGY. 



These expressions certainly seem to imply a distinc- 
tion of being. They bear upon the face of them that 
aspect. They convey the idea of separate existence, 
— of a mind acting for itself, — of a being possessing 
consciousness, will, affections, — the object of the Fa- 
ther's love and the participator of his glory. This, it 
must be conceded, is the first impression one would 
naturally derive from the words before us. Did these 
passages stand alone, there would be no reason, per- 
haps, to call in question the correctness of that first 
impression ; it is only when we compare them with 
other passages, and with the general teaching of the 
sacred Scriptures, that we hesitate to attach to them 
such a sense. The doctrine of the divine unity — of 
the one, simple, undivided essence, one in the strict 
and absolute sense, numerically one — is too plainly 
taught in the Scriptures, too positively and earnestly 
set forth, to be called in question by any one who 
receives these writings as authoritative in matters of 
faith. But to attach to the passages now under con- 
sideration the sense proposed, is to come directly into 
conflict with this cardinal truth. If the Son in his 
original nature be properly and. truly divine, and at 
the same time possesses a distinct and proper individu- 
ality, a separate existence frgm that of the Father, 
then it is no longer true that there is one only living 
and true God. There are two. And no acuteness of 
reasoning and metaphysical distinction can make it 
otherwise, and no evasion of the real points at issue 
can conceal the fact. We may call it mystery; but 
still it remains a palpable, obvious contradiction. 

We must go back, then, and examine the premises 
more carefully. Do these passages teach the distinct 



THE DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITY. 



319 



and proper individuality of the Logos, in the sense now 
intended ? Do they ascribe to him an existence sepa- 
rate from that of the Father, a being of his own, a 
mind endowed with the various faculties that pertain 
to mental existence, such as consciousness, affections, 
will, etc., in distinction from the mind, affections, will, 
etc., of the Father ? In a word, is the literal construc- 
tion of these expressions the true and proper one, or 
are we to regard them as tropical, in some sense, and 
used by way of adaptation to our conceptions and 
modes of thought and speech ? 

Certain it is that, in order to express the idea of a 
distinction in the divine nature, we are under the 
necessity of employing expressions like these. Such is 
the poverty of human language and of human thought, 
that we can in no other way approach themes so far 
above us than by appropriating to them expressions 
borrowed from material objects and the range of human 
observation. On the supposition, then, that the Son 
has not originally a proper individuality*, a distinct 
being and existence, but that the divine essence is 
strictly one and undivided, still it would be natural, 
almost inevitable, indeed, that the sacred writers should 
speak as they do in the passages under consideration. 
On the contrary, if the Son in his pre-existent state 
has a distinct existence, a proper individuality, separate 
from that of the Father, and if the Spirit is individually 
distinct from both, — if, in other words, Father, Son, 
and Spirit are three distinct divine minds, — nothing 
could be easier than to express that idea plainly and 
positively in the language which men ordinarily employ. 
This, certainly, the Scriptures have not done. Where, 
unless in the passages under consideration, is any such 



320 



STUDIES *IX THEOLOGY. 



idea conveyed ? That it is not necessarily and posi- 
tively conveyed in these passages is plain, since, as we 
have just observed, the language is precisely such as 
would naturally be employed on the supposition that 
simply a distinction existing in the nature of the God- 
head, and not separate individuality in the strict and 
proper sense, had been intended. 

When Christ speaks of the glory which he had with 
the Father before the world was, and of the Father as 
having then loved him, are we necessarily to understand 
him as implying anything more than a participation in 
the divine nature and dignity in that pre-existent state ? 
Is it not the God-man, Christ Jesus, addressing the 
Father, and speaking of himself as he was before he 
assumed humanity ? And how else in human lan- 
guage could he speak of himself, as he was in that 
former state, except in the way he does, as if possessing 
individual existence ? 

And when John speaks of the word as with God, is 
it not under the same restriction and necessity of 
speech — an approximation, such as human language 
and the human mind will admit of, to that which in 
all its length and breadth lies far above our reach and 
comprehension ? Is there not, in all these cases, present 
to the mind of the writer or speaker the proper individ- 
uality of Jesus, as he existed among men, serving as 
the basis and ground-work of the language used to 
denote that higher and pre-existent state — t\\Q starting- 
point from which the mind sets out ? And if so, will 
not this account for the nature of the expressions and 
illustrations employed ? 

In fine, whatever view we take of these expressions, 
when we come to place them beside and weigh them 



THE DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITY. 



321 



against the numerous passages in which the unity of 
God is stated in the most positive terms, the latter 
certainly preponderate. If we follow the guidance of 
Scripture, we are to conceive of God as one — one 
being or existence — one mind, creating, directing, con- 
trolling all things ; possessing the faculties and attri- 
butes essential to all mental or spiritual existence, as 
consciousness, understanding, will, affections, etc. We 
cannot modify this idea of the divine unity in any 
essential point without departing from the track of 
revelation. The moment we conceive of the Deity as 
consisting of three distinct individuals, each possessing 
consciousness, affections, will, of his own,»we contradict 
and virtually abandon the true scriptural simple idea 
of one God. Whatever guard we may throw about 
our language, we do, in fact, from that moment, be- 
lieve not in one God, but in three. It is plain, then, 
that we must either adopt a modified view of the divine 
unity, abandoning the strict and proper sense of the 
term, and suffering the different divine persons — 
Father, Son, and Spirit — to be one in no other sense 
than as Peter, John, and James are one, i.e. specifically 
so, — one in disposition, purpose, heart, aim, nature; 
or else we must modify our idea of the individuality of 
the Son and Spirit so as not to conceive of them as 
separate existences or beings — -separate minds, think- 
ing, devising, willing, etc., in distinction from the one 
divine mind. Our choice is between the two — either 
this or tritheism. This, and not tritheism, we are com- 
pelled to say ; for such is the decision at once of reve- 
lation and of reason. 

Do we then, in so saying, reject the personality of 
the Son and of the Spirit? By no means. In the 
21 



322 



STUDIES IN THEOLOGY. 



true sense of that word as used with reference to the 
Deity, in the only sense in which the word ought ever 
to be used in such connection, we do not reject it. 
In every other sense we do. As denoting a distinction 
existing eternally in the divine nature — a distinction 
not understood or capable of being comprehended fully 
by us, mysterious to us, as are many other things 
respecting Deity — a distinction, however, which lays 
the foundation for a development in the history of our 
world of God as Father, as Son, and as Spirit, — in 
this sense the term personality may be employed con- 
veniently, in place and for want of some better term. 
And this is all that the Scriptures seem, on the whole, 
to convey respecting the matter, and all that we can 
admit, consistently with the cardinal doctrine of the 
divine unity of essence or being. 1 

That many Trinitarians, ancient and modern, go 
further than this, is to be conceded. They use the 
word person in reference to the Deity in a much 
broader sense, meaning by it much the same thing as 
when they apply it to three different men. That such 
writers are, in reality, not so much trinitarians as 
tritheists, is also to be conceded. For what can con- 
stitute three Gods, if three Divine existences, each 
possessing strict and proper individuality, — three Di- 
vine minds, each acting, feeling, willing, of itself, — 
are not ? What is personality, in the ordinary and 
strict sense, more than this ? In what sense, other 
than this, are any three men three persons ? 2 

This method of stating the doctrine of the Trinity is 
particularly unfortunate, since it not only leads the 

1 See note (C.) at the end of this Article. 

2 See note (D.) at the end of this Article. 



THE DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITY. 



323 



miud that adopts it into unnecessary confusion, and 
even error, but, by coming into direct and unavoidable 
collision with one of the plainest truths of revelation, 
the divine unity, it brings the doctrine itself into dis- 
repute, and in many instances occasions its entire 
rejection. It is a sad fact, yet one with which he who 
is conversant with the history of doctrines in the 
church is but too familiar, that in many cases the first 
sources of the error and essential heresy which have 
arisen in the world, to the no small detriment of truth 
and the human mind, are to be found in the injudicious 
and unreasonable statements and opinions of those who 
have held the very opposite extreme. Thus, unques- 
tionably, has it been in the present instance. Not a 
few have been led to reject the divinity of Christ and 
the doctrine of the Trinity in toto, as the only way of 
avoiding the really irreconcilable contradictions involved 
in the method of statement now under consideration. 
And this state of things must continue so long as they 
who hold the doctrine allow themselves to use terms 
in this loose and incorrect manner ; applying to the 
distinctions in the divine nature the term person, in 
nearly or quite the ordinary sense of the word ; speak- 
ing and thinking of the Father, Son, and Spirit as if 
they were three distinct beings, who together consti- 
tute the Deity, who consult together, and enjoy each 
other's society and converse ; thus virtually abandoning 
the doctrine of the simple, undivided unity of the 
Godhead, and, when pressed with the conflicting na- 
ture of these two things, taking refuge as a last resort 
behind the broad shield of acknowledged mystery. 

A leading New England divine, not long deceased, 
and whose writings are destined to exert for years 



324 



STUDIES IN THEOLOGY. 



to come no inconsiderable influence upon theological 
science, thus discourses upon the mode of the divine 
existence : " We find no difficulty in conceiving of 
three divine persons. It is just as easy to conceive of 

three divine persons as of three human persons 

The only difficulty in this case lies in conceiving these 
three persons to be but ewe." 1 The same sentiment 
frequently recurs. " We have as clear an idea of these 
three divine persons as of three human persons. There 
is no mystery in the personality of the Father, Son, 
and Holy Ghost, though there is a profound mystery 
in their being one God." 2 

Using the term personality in this sense, conceiving 
of the three divine persons as we do of three human 
persons, we are quite ready to admit, with the author, 
that there is both a difficulty and a profound mystery, 
nay, we should certainly add, an utter impossibility, 
in conceiving of these three as one being. 

It does not remove the difficulty to say that " being 
may signify something different from person in respect 
to deity," and therefore " we may easily conceive that 
God should be but one being, and yet exist in three 
persons." For being and person signify different things 
as respects man also ; yet it is not easy to conceive of 
three human persons constituting one human being. 
Nor is it any advance towards the removal of this 
difficulty to say, what is doubtless true, that " the 
Father, Son, and Holy Ghost are three in respect to 
their personality, and but one in respect to their nature 
and essence." 3 Personality is here supposed to be 
something distinct from nature and essence, so that 

1 Emmons's Works, Vol. iv. p. 111. 2 Ibid., Vol. iv. p. 125. 

» Ibid., Vol. iv. p. HQ. 



THE DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITY. 



325 



what pertains to the one does not pertain to the other. 
Very true. But the personality of the Father, Son, 
and Spirit, according to the author, consists in this : 
that each " is able to understand, to will, and to act of 
himself," and to do so " as a free, voluntary, almighty 
agent." 1 But do not understanding, will, and free 
voluntary action pertain, we ask, to the very nature 
and essence of deity ? . Can we conceive of Deity as 
essentially and in his original nature destitute of these 
properties ? If not, then, as personality consists in 
these things, what becomes of the distinction just 
made, and how is it that a threefold personality, in 
this human sense, does not also involve a threefold 
nature and essence ? 

Indeed, the author in a subsequent passage virtually 
admits that this explanation is unsatisfactory : " It is 
as easy," he repeats, " to conceive of three divine 
persons as to conceive of one divine person. The only 
difficulty is to conceive how three divine persons should 
be but one divine being. But this is the mystery of 
the doctrine, which it is neither possible nor necessary 
for us to understand." 2 If it is neither possible nor 
necessary for us to conceive how these three persons 
can be one being, — and we are perfectly ready to 
admit that it is even so, in the sense now attached to 
the word person, — then what avails any explanation, 
or any attempt to explain ? And what, moreover, 
becomes of the assertion that " we can easily conceive 
that God should be but one being, and yet exist in 
three persons." 

If the doctrine of the divine unity be not essentially 
swept away and abandoned by these and the like 

1 Emmons's Works, Vol. iv. pp. 107, 108. 2 Ibid., Vol. iv. p. 130. 



326 



STUDIES IN THEOLOGY. 



representations, then we are at a loss to conceive what 
idea can be attached in any man's mind to that word 
" unity." It is replied : The Scriptures nowhere teach 
that the unity of God is just like our unity. True. 
But what, we ask again, is the proper and primitive 
meaning of that word " unity ? " Are there several kinds 
of unity, as there are several shades of a color, or 
several races of men ? Strictly speaking, is there any 
other unity but numerical unity ? And when we 
think of a thing as being one, or as more than one, is 
not this one of the simplest ideas that the human mind 
can form — one of its elementary conceptions ? Is it 
not evident that when we speak of three or more 
personal, individual, distinct agents, each willing and 
acting for himself, as being one, we use the term in a 
secondary, and not in its proper and primitive, sense ? 
We mean they are one in sentiment, one in heart, one 
in purpose and action, etc. In this sense any three 
men, or any number of men, may be one. And is the 
glorious, the cardinal doctrine of the divine unity 
reduced to this — a mere figurative oneness, a specific 
unity, merely ? In this sense, one may ask, why were 
not the gods of heathen mythology one, partaking, as 
they were supposed to do, of the same nature, the 
same spirit, and the same attributes ? When we read 
that the Lord our God is one Lord, when we hear Je- 
hovah assert in the plainest manner his undivided unity 
of existence and dominion against the multiplicity of 
heathen and false gods, when we read that " God is 
one," that " there is one God and Father of all," " the 
King eternal," " the only wise God," is there, we ask, 
in all this no assertion of simple, strict, and proper 
unity as respects the being to whom these solemn and 



THE DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITY. 



327 



repeated asseverations refer ? What language could 
more explicitly have affirmed such an idea, supposing 
this to have been intended ? 

It devolves on those who conceive of the three divine, 
as they do of three human, persons, not merely to 
admit that it is a mysterious thing how these three are 
one being, but to show that in any intelligible sense, or 
any proper use of terms, they can be one ; that three 
conscious, intelligent, voluntary agents, thinking, feel- 
ing, willing, acting, each for himself, distinct from 
each other, do, or can, in any proper sense, constitute 
one being ; and that when the Scriptures speak of God 
as one, they mean only such unity as this. This is 
more than can be shown. 

Accordingly, we find that those who take this view 
usually place the doctrine of the divine unity quite in 
the back-ground. It has ceased to mean much or to 
bo of much importance. The distinguished divine, 
from whom we have just quoted, sums up his argument 
respecting the personal distinction in the Godhead, 
with this remark : " We know, therefore, that they are 
three distinct persons. Their personality is plainly 
and intelligibly revealed ; though their unity is not and 

cannot be revealed All that we can know, or 

need to know, about the mysterious mode of the divine 
existence, is the proper personality of the Father, Son, 
and Holy Ghost, and not their unity." 1 This is bold 
language, surely. We do not understand the writer, 
however, to assert, as the words might seem to imply, 
that the divine unity is not a matter of revelation, but 
only that it is a doctrine which we are not capable of 



1 Emmons's Works, Vol. iv. p. 121. 



328 



STUDIES IN THEOLOGY. 



understanding ; and in this we fully concur, provided 
we are shut up to his idea of divine personality. 

The view now under consideration has led those 
who adopt it to a method of speaking of the sacred 
Trinity which seems to us altogether objectionable. 
They are accustomed to represent the divine persons 
as consulting together, forming plans, and enjoying 
mutual intercourse and companionship. " Society," 
says the writer to whom we have already referred, " is 
the source of the highest felicity. And that society 
affords the greatest enjoyment which is composed of 
persons of the same character, of the same disposition, 
of the same designs, of the same pursuits. The Father, 
Son, and Holy Ghost, who are three equally divine 
persons in the one living and true God, are perfectly 
united in all these respects ; and therefore God's exist- 
ing a trinity in unity necessarily renders him the all- 
sufficient source of his own most perfect felicity. We 
cannot conceive of any other mode of existence so 
absolutely perfect and blessed." 1 

We ask, now, whether there be not in all this the 
essential element of tritheism. We put it to every 
candid and intelligent mind, whether, if the doctrine 
of divine unity were altogether stricken out of the 
Bible, and in place of it stood the revelation of three 
gods, it would be possible to speak of the society and 
companionship mutually enjoyed by the three, in terms 
plainer, more direct, and appropriate, than the above. 

This is language by no means peculiar to one author 
or one school of divines. We find it not in the lec- 
tures of theologians and the pages of controversial 
writers, merely, but not unfrequently even in those 

1 Emmons's Works, Vol. iv. p. 115. 



THE DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITY. 



329 



elementary treatises designed to convey the first ideas 
of sacred truth to the mind of childhood. What other 
impression can be left upon the mind of the child, or 
of the simple-hearted adult, by such representations, 
than that these three persons of the Godhead are very 
much like any other three persons, better pleased with 
each other's society and converse than with solitude ; 
and when he comes afterward to learn that nevertheless 
God is one being, is he not fully prepared to perceive 
in this simplest of all ideas which man can possibly 
form of the Deity a mystery which he can never expect 
to understand or explain. 

And what is the authority for all this ? Do the 
Scriptures thus speak of God ? If they do, we will no 
further object. But how is this ? Where do we read 
of three divine persons as thus conversing together and 
enjoying each other's society ? Where do we read of 
the Father's consulting with the Son respecting the 
work of redemption ? " Thou art my Son, this day 
have I begotten thee." " Then said I, Lo I come ; in 
the volume of the book it is written of me, I delight to 
do thy will, my God." Does this language refer to 
the distinction originally and eternally existing in the 
divine nature, the true and proper trinity of the God- 
head, or is it not rather and most manifestly spoken 
with reference to the incarnate Word, in the person of 
Jesus of Xazaretlr? And when from the opening 
heavens a voice proclaims, at the baptism of Jesus, 
" This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased," 
are we to infer from this that the same distinction of 
personality in the human sense always existed between 
the two as at that moment, and that there was from 
eternity the same occasion for such language to be 
addressed by one to the other ? 



330 



STUDIES IN THEOLOGY. 



When shall we come to remember that the language 
of the sacred writers respecting Christ the Messiah, 
the God-man, does not necessarily apply, and cannot 
fairly be made to refer, to the primitive and original 
nature of the Divine Being, as he existed from eternity, 
prior to all manifestations of himself in time ? Indeed, 
are not the very terms, Father, Son, and Spirit, terms 
borrowed from, and having special reference to, the 
the economy of grace and of man's redemption ? Do 
they not derive their special significance and force, as 
terms, from the manifestation of God in Christ our 
Saviour to redeem lost man, and the operation of God 
in his Spirit to sanctify and renew him ? Are the 
terms Father, Son, and Spirit ever employed, in fact, 
by the sacred writers to denote that original distinction 
existing in the divine nature from eternity, which con- 
stitutes the foundation for this personal development, 
and with which alone we are concerned in treating of 
the mode of the divine existence ? That such a dis- 
tinction in the divine nature exists, and has existed 
from eternity, the foundation of whatever developments 
or manifestations of himself the Deity has made in 
time and to our race — this we believe to be the doc- 
trine of the Scriptures. But is it to this original 
distinction in the nature of the Godhead that the terms 
Father, Son, and Spirit apply as used in the Scriptures? 
Is the term Father applied to the Deity, in the sense 
now intended, as denoting the first of a trinity of 
persons, prior to and irrespective of the incarnation ? 
Is the term Son, in a similar sense, applied to the 
Deity prior, and without prospective reference, to that 
wonderful event, the coming among men of one who 
was in the beginning with God, and who was God ? 



THE DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITY. 



331 



Are the terms Logos and Son used indiscriminately in 
the sacred writings, and without distinction of meaning? 
Is the term Holy Spirit in like manner used to designate 
the Divine Being, as he is in himself and from eternity, 
prior to, and independent of, all operation and influence 
of that Being upon the hearts of men ? These positions 
are almost universally assumed, but certainly without 
authority from the Scriptures. If this be so, — if these 
terms, as used in the sacred writings, refer not to the 
original nature of the Godhead, but to the Deity as he 
stands related to the economy of man's redemption, — 
then what becomes of the theory now under discus- 
sion ? And where is any man's authority for this whole 
matter and method of representing the one God of the 
Scriptures as existing from eternity in a distinct and 
complete threefold personality like that of three men, 
and enjoying that society, converse, and companion- 
ship which would result from such a relation ? Such 
a view we believe to be at once inconsistent with 
the teachings of Scripture, and at war with reason, 
which is utterly unable to reconcile this statement 
with the acknowledged and proper unity of the Divine 
Being. 

But in this we are digressing from the main purpose 
of our inquiry. 

What, then, is the result of the present investigation? 
What shall we conclude to be the true doctrine respect- 
ing this subject ? Evidently this. While the Scriptures 
teach the absolute and supreme divinity of the Son, 
they also in the plainest and most positive terms teach 
the absolute unity of God. While, therefore, we are 
not at liberty to put such a construction on passages 
which indicate a certain distinction in the divine nature 



332 



STUDIES IN THEOLOGY. 



as will in any way conflict with this idea of God as one 
simple, undivided essence or being, we must still allow 
a distinction to exist, and to be eternal, and to constitute 
the foundation of that development which the Deity 
has been pleased to make of himself, in revelation and 
in the economy of grace, as Father, Son, and Spirit. 

Whatever justice or injustice there may be in the 
charge of Sabellianism very generally brought against 
Dr. Bushnell, 1 whatever differences there may be be- 
tween his theory and the Patri-Passian or Sabellian 
system, in these respects, at least, they would seem to 
agree, that the Trinity, or distinction of persons, has 
its source not in the nature of God, but rather in the 
wants and necessities of man, and that it is therefore 
not an eternal distinction, but one which is temporal 
and finite. It is an instrumental arrangement, a vehicle 
or mode of thought, a revelation of the otherwise un- 
known and unknowable God. 

There may be, and doubtless is, a sense, and an 
important one, in which this, or something like this, is 
true. If by impersonation, or trinity of persons, be 
meant the actual manifestation of God to man under 
the forms of the incarnate Logos and the Holy Spirit, 
— the former redeeming, the latter sanctifying, the 
human soul, — then it is indeed a thing which begins, 
which has relation to time, and which finds its explana- 
tion in the exigency of human wants. But if, as we 
suppose, it be meant that prior to this manifestation, 
and from eternity, there did not exist in the divine nature 
itself the foundation for just this development, or that 
this foundation did not amount to a real distinction in 
the divine nature, partaking of the character of* per- 
iod in Christ. By Horace Bushnell. Hartford. 



THE DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITY. 



333 



sonality, then, as we must think, there lies couched 
under these forms of expression an error not incon- 
siderable or unimportant. 

But Dr. Bushnell describes the Logos as the faculty 
of self-expression in the Deity. We are ready to ask, 
then, must not this faculty have existed eternally, and 
have pertained to the very nature of the Deity ? Has 
the immutable one a faculty to-day which he had not 
yesterday, and for which until now there was no foun- 
dation in his nature ? If, in like manner, we suppose 
the term Holy Spirit to denote the divine faculty of 
operation on the human mind and heart, must not this 
also have existed eternally in the Deity, a faculty per- 
taining to his very nature ? And are not these two 
faculties distinct one from the other ? Have we not, 
then, after all, an eternal distinction existing in the 
divine nature itself, as the ground and foundation of 
those impersonations of the Deity which take place in 
time ? 

To this distinction we may, for convenience, apply 
the term hypostasis, subsistence, or person, if we please, 
provided we allow neither ourselves nor others to forget 
that when thus employed the word is taken out of its 
ordinary sense, and used in a manner, and for a 
purpose, altogether extraordinary. Here is trinity — 
trinity in unity. The Father, the Son, and the Spirit 
are God ; and these three are one God. This we 
believe to be the doctrine of the Scriptures. That it is 
also the Calvinistic doctrine is unquestionable, though 
a matter of infinitely less importance. 

The doctrine of the Trinity, correctly viewed, what- 
ever difficulties it may present to the human mind, 



334 



STUDIES IN THEOLOGY. 



does not appear fairly liable to the objections which are 
frequently urged against it. 

It is sometimes pronounced an incomprehensible doc- 
trine. 

Shall we ask a man to believe what he cannot com- 
prehend ? By no means. Neither can we allow him 
to object to it, much less pronounce it untrue. He is 
in all modesty and propriety shut up to the necessity 
of being silent ; since, in order to be sure of the truth 
or falsity of any doctrine or statement, one must com- 
prehend it. How else can he know whether it be true 
or false ? 

But we protest against the assumption that this 
doctrine is incomprehensible. Something pertaining 
to the subject there may be, there undoubtedly is, 
which we do not comprehend. But what is it ? Not 
the fact, which the Scriptures assert, that God exists, 
and operates in the economy of grace, as Father, as 
Son, and as Spirit, and that these three are one God. 
This is certainly a plain statement, and any intelligent 
man can understand what it means. The nature of 
this distinction in the divine being, the modus of it, we 
do not understand ; it has never been revealed to us ; 
and therefore respecting this we affirm nothing. Shall 
we therefore reject the fact that such a distinction 
exists, and is matter of revelation ? Is this the only 
thing respecting the Deity which we find ourselves 
unable to comprehend? How is it as to his self- 
existence ? We admit the fact. Can we tell how a 
being can be the author of his own existence ? God 
is eternal. Are we sure that we quite comprehend 
what is meant by this ? He is omnipresent. Can we 
exactly understand how one and the same being can 



THE DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITY. 



335 



be in all parts of the universe at one and the same 
instant ? When we read that the Word became flesh 
and dwelt among men, and they beheld his glory, the 
glory as of the only-begotten of the Father, full of 
grace and truth, we read of an event which is in itself 
a sublime mystery, yet on which all our hopes of 
eternal life are based. How little do we in fact know 
of God ! Can we find out the Almighty to perfection ? 
Or shall we set aside the plain revelations which he 
has made of himself, the facts which we do know, 
because there are other things which we do not know ? 
No truth-loving mind will do this. We believe that 
God exists, but we do not know how ; that he is self- 
existent, but it is a mystery we cannot explain ; that 
he is eternal, omnipresent, omnipotent, omniscient, we 
also believe ; yet here again our philosophy fails us. 
On precisely the same evidence we believe that the one 
God exists and manifests himself to man as Father, 
Son, and Spirit, and that the foundation of this dis- 
tinction exists in the divine nature ; w T hile at the same 
time the modus of this existence and manifestation — 
the exact nature of this distinction — we do not profess 
to understand. The simple fact we can comprehend 
and we do believe. 

It is sometimes objected to the doctrine of the Trinity, 
that it is contrary to reason. 

That statements may be made respecting this subject 
which shall involve contradiction and absurdity, we 
readily admit. That such statements have been made, 
and that not unfrequently, we cannot deny. For such 
statements neither the doctrine nor the advocates of 
it are responsible, but only the authors of them. We 
are not called upon to defend all the views which 



336 



STUDIES IN THEOLOGY. 



even good and wise and learned men have entertained 
respecting this matter. That the doctrine of the Trinity 
in its true form and statement involves anything con- 
tradictory or unreasonable, is more than can be shown. 
What is it that we assert ? Not that God is one being, 
and yet three beings ; not that he has simple unity of 
essence, and at the same time a threefold proper indi- 
viduality — that the Father, Son, and Spirit are three 
persons in the sense in which Peter, James, and John 
are three, and yet are all one being ; not this, nor 
anything resembling this ; but simply that there is in 
the divine nature a threefold distinction, mysterious 
to us, yet evidently revealed as existing, out of which 
arises a threefold manifestation to man of God, as 
Father, as Son, and as Spirit ; in all, one and the same 
being ; in all, one God. When to designate this dis- 
tinction we apply to it the term personality, we do not 
mean by that term to imply that the distinction is such 
as exists between different individuals of the human 
family, nor to institute any comparison between the 
two cases. We do not affirm that the Father, the Son ? 
and the Spirit are individually distinct, as three men or 
three angels are distinct, each possessing consciousness, 
will, affections, of his own. This were to deny the 
proper unity of God, as we admit. We do not regard 
the word person, or hypostasis, or any other word, as 
capable of expressing exactly the nature of this three- 
fold relation. We are not sure, indeed, that these are 
the best words which could have been selected. But 
some word we must use, if we speak at all of these 
matters ; and, with this explanation, we challenge any 
man to point out the inconsistency or absurdity or un- 
reasonableness of the statement we have made respect- 



THE DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITY. 



337 



ing the divine existence. What is there in reason to 
contradict the fact that such a distinction in the divine 
nature as that we have spoken of may and does exist ? 
What is there inconsistent or absurd in the idea ? 
What is there in it which the Scriptures do not plainly 
reveal ? 

It has sometimes been objected to the doctrine of the 
Trinity, that it is theoretical rather than practical, 
matter of conjecture and speculation, which, whether it 
be true or false, is of little consequence to mankind. 

Nothing can be further from the truth than this 
view of the subject. As regards the substance of the 
doctrine, it is not a matter of speculation or theory, 
but a simple matter of fact, given on the authority of 
God's word, than which there can be no better authority 
for any statement. As regards our explanations of the 
matter, our views and opinions respecting it, there is, 
indeed, wide field for conjecture and theory. The 
same is true, however, of all the explanations and 
views which men adopt of revealed truth. These 
opinions, views, explanations of ours may be right or 
wrong. The doctrines themselves stand upon a dif- 
ferent basis, and, whatever becomes of our methods 
and views and peculiar philosophy, remain unshaken, 
because they are revealed truth. So it is in the present 
instance. We may speculate and theorize as we please 
respecting the mode of the divine existence ; but the 
doctrine of a triune God is neither a speculation nor a 
theory, but a revelation from above. Nor is it true that 
the doctrine under consideration is in its nature and 
tendencies speculative rather than practical, belonging 
to the creed and the catechism and the theological 
school, rather than to the earnest heart and life of the 
22 



338 



STUDIES IN THEOLOGY. 



Christian disciple. Thus it has been sometimes re- 
garded. But we see not how any one can think so 
who understands either the doctrine or himself; his 
own position in the moral universe ; his relation as a 
creature and a subject to God the Creator and the 
Sovereign, or as a sinner to God the Saviour and God 
the Sanctifier. So admirably does this triune mani- 
festation of the Deity correspond to human character 
and human wants, that the impression irresistibly forces 
itself upon the reflecting mind, that while the founda- 
tion for such a revelation- of himself must exist origi- 
nally in the very nature of the Divine Being, yet the 
revelation itself must have arisen out of that great and 
wonderful scheme of redemption which from the first 
has existed in the counsels of God. Strike out this 
doctrine, and you leave us without a divine Redeemer 
— sinners without a Saviour. No longer do we per- 
ceive in Christ one in whom dwelleth all the fulness 
of the Godhead bodily, who is able to make atonement 
for sin, to 'save to the uttermost all who come to God by 
him. We see in him only a man, or at most an angel. 
But what can a man or an angel do for us, sinners ? 
It is only our God that can save us ; it is only him we 
seek. Like one of old, we stand at the sepulchre 
weeping, because we find not our Lord. No longer do 
we perceive in the Deity any connecting link with 
human wants and necessities, but only a just and 
righteous lawgiver and avenging judge. How can we 
sinners, unpardoned, uncleansed, unredeemed, approach 
such a God ? How can he permit us to approach him ? 
But when from this cheerless, distant abstraction of the 
reason which unbelief would set up as our only object 
of fear and worship, we turn to the God whom the 



THE DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITY. 



339 



Scriptures present, how wide the contrast ! It is as 
when one emerges from the gloom and deadly chill of 
the deep forest or cavern into the cheerful sunlight. 
We open the sacred writings, and find the Deity re- 
vealed to us as Father, as Son, and as Holy Spirit, one 
God. Behold here the foundation of all our hopes, 
provision for all our necessities. Behold here a link 
connecting us sinners with heaven and the ever-blessed 
Deity and eternal life. In God the Father we find 
the source and end and object of our being. In God 
the Son we find the way and the truth and the life, by 
whom we may reach this great and glorious end of our 
existence. In God the Spirit we find the guide whom 
we need to conduct us thither. 

44 1 am he that was, he that is, and he that shall be; 
and no one hath ever unfolded my veil." Such was 
the striking and deeply significant inscription on an 
ancient heathen temple. Every one feels that it was 
appropriate to the place, and full of truth as regards 
the pagan worshipper, who knew or dreamed that 
there was a God, eternal, the beginning and the end 
of all things, but to whose darkened mind that God 
had seen fit to make no higher revelation of himself. 
But with us it is far otherwise. As we approach the 
Christian temple, the sacred edifice of truth, in whose 
outer courts man in his earthly being is permitted to 
worship, we do behold the mysterious veil in part with- 
drawn ; some unseen hand hath rent it ; and through 
its opening folds the eye is permitted to rest upon 
something of the glory that surrounds the inner presence 
and fills the holy of holies. The sublimest things, the 
most sacred, appear revealed to the earnest eye, indis- 
tinctly seen, indeed, and in part, and yet really. We 



340 



STUDIES IN THEOLOGY. 



seem, as we gaze upon the sacred mysteries, to behold 
the moving of a sublime and mighty spectacle — one 
who was in the beginning with God, and was God, and 
thought it no robbery to be equal with God, him at 
whose word the pillars of creation rose and stood hi 
their appointed places, laying aside the glory that he 
had with the Father, assuming the form of a servant, 
the vesture of humanity, and dwelling among men. 
We behold his glory, as the glory of the only begotten 
of the Father, full of grace and truth. The veil has 
indeed risen, and Deity stands before us, God manifest 
in the flesh. We hear him say : " I am the way, the 
truth, and the life ; no man cometh unto the Father 
but by me." " And I, if I be lifted up, will draw all 
men unto me." " For this purpose came I into the 
world." " He that believeth in me, though he were 
dead, yet shall he live." We hear him speak also of 
one whom the Father will send in his name, who shall 
comfort his people, and sanctify them, and " guide 
them into all truth." 

Again we look, and we behold this same incarnate 
Word, arrayed in a more glorious form, seated on the 
right hand of the majesty on high, and ever living to 
make intercession for us. This veil, to the eye of 
reason impenetrable, is it not indeed lifted ? Comes 
not the Deity very near to man in this manifestation ? 
This doctrine of a triune God, is it not indeed a most 
practical as well as sublime doctrine, linked with all 
our hopes, the avenue of our most direct approach to 
the eternal and invisible One ? 

Into this doctrine the Christian disciple has been 
solemnly baptized. When brought in early childhood 
to the altar of parental faithfulness, or when in maturer 



THE DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITY. 



341 



years subscribing with his own hand to the God of 
Israel, this sacred name of the Triune was pronounced 
upon him, as the seal of the sacred ordinance, the 
signet of the great king, touched his brow. To that 
holy name, to that blessed truth, the whole church of 
God on earth is consecrate. Let us, as an old divine 
hath said, " walk up and down the earth with this 
impression ever fixed upon us, that we belong to the 
triune God." Let us ever think of the mystery of 
the Divine Being with feelings of deepest reverence and 
awe ; conscious that we know little, thankful that so 
much has been graciously revealed. 



342 



STUDIES IN THEOLOGY. 



NOTES. 



Note A. — Page 303. 

The following passages sufficiently indicate what were the views 
of Calvin as to this point. 

"But they deceive themselves in dreaming of three separate 
individuals, each of them possessing a part of the divine essence. 
..... They even foolishly suppose that our opinion implies a 
quaternity ; whereas they are guillty of falsehood and calumny in 
ascribing to us a judgment of their own ; as though we pretended 
that the three persons are so many streams proceeding from one 
essence ; when it is evident from our writings that we separate not 
the persons from the essence, but, though they subsist in it, make a 
distinction between them. If the persons were separated from the 
essence, there would perhaps be some probability in their argument ; 
but then there would be a trinity of Gods, not a trinity of persons 
contained in one God. 

" Therefore let such as love sobriety, and will be contented with 
the measure of faith, briefly attend to what is useful to be known ; 
which is that when we profess to believe in one God, the word ' God' 
denotes a single and simple essence, in which we comprehend three 
persons or hypostases. 

" Wherefore let us not imagine such a trinity of persons as in- 
cludes an idea of separation or does not immediately recall us to 
the unity. The names of Father, Son, and Spirit certainly imply a 
real distinction. Let no one suppose them to be mere epithets by 
which God is variously designated from his works ; but it is a dis- 
tinction, not a division." 

How much importance Calvin attached to the use and retention 
of the word " person " in connection with this doctrine, is evident 
from the following truly noble sentiment : " Utinam sepulta essent 
nomina, constaret modo haec inter omnes fides, patrem et filium et 
spiritum sanctum esse unum deum!" 



THE DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITY. 



343 



Note B. — Page 313. 

Every attempt has been made to set aside the force of this passage 
and destroy its authority, but in vain. It is undoubtedly genuine, 
being found in all the MSS. and ancient versions ; nor is there 
the least authority for any change of reading or of punctuation, 
so as to substitute a different meaning. Beyond all question the 
true and supreme God is here intended ; since of no other can it 
be said that he is over all or supreme, and of no other that he is 
God blessed forever, — an expression never applied to any but the 
supreme Deity. The attempt of Socinian writers to set aside the 
force of this passage by construing it into a doxology, placing a 
period after 7ravrwv, so that the latter clause becomes an independent 
sentence ("God be blessed forever"), is not only without author- 
ity, nearly all the MSS. and ancient versions giving the passage 
as we have it, but is in conflict at once with the course of thought, 
which neither requires nor admits a doxology in this connection, 
and also with Greek usage, which never constructs a doxology after 
this fashion. In doxology the adjective comes first, and the noun 
has the article (cvXoyT/ros 6 #€os), as, for example, Eph. i. 3 ; 
2 Cor. i. 3. 

Note C. — Page 322. 

I am by no means insensible of the difficulties which press upon 
the view now taken. On a subject of this nature difficulties attend 
any theory which we may form. We cannot hope to escape them. 
Look at the matter from what point of view we will, much remains 
unexplained and inexplicable. To the position maintained in the 
present article there are objections of which it is impossible not to 
admit the force. That the view from which it dissents is open to 
fewer or less weighty objections I am not prepared to admit. 

It may be objected that the view here maintained — that of a 
modified personality — requires our assent to that which is con- 
fessedly and wholly inconceivable. We can conceive of the relation 
of two or more beings to each other, it may be said ; but we can 
form no conception of an ontological distinction in one and the 
same mind that shall be analogous to, and furnish foundation for, 
the use of the terms, I, thou, he. This is true. We cannot con- 
ceive, or, more properly, we cannot comprehend, this distinction. 
And yet it may exist. There is much about the divine nature and 



344 



STUDIES IN THEOLOGY. 



perfections that to us is, and must ever remain, incomprehensible. 
We cannot expect to comprehend the whole nature of Deity. We 
cannot represent to ourselves in thought the distinction in question ; 
but neither can we represent to ourselves in thought the existence 
without beginning of the God whom we worship. We do not know 
in what this distinction consists of which we speak ; but neither do 
we know in what the divine essence consists, nor in what respects 
it differs from other essences. This, however, is no argument 
against the divine existence, nor against his existence in the manner 
now supposed. Is it any more conceivable to suppose three distinct 
minds in one essence ? or the powers and faculties of three minds 
united in one being? or how three distinct beings can in any 
proper sense of the word be one being ? Those who hold either 
of these theories ought surely not to object to any other theory that 
it is inconceivable. 

True, we ought not to multiply mystery unnecessarily. The 
simplest theory is the best, provided it meet and consist with the 
facts of the case. But in the present instance the theories which 
are simplest, and most readily conceivable, do not consist with the 
facts of the case. That is precisely the difficulty with them. Nothing 
is simpler than to conceive of three distinct individuals, or of the 
Logos as a being unequal with the Father, and whose existence is 
derived and not eternal ; but neither of these theories consists, or 
can be made to consist, with the great essential facts of the case, the 
true and proper unity of God, the true and proper divinity of the 
Logos. 

It may be further objected that if the Divine Being is strictly and 
numerically one, then either the whole divine being becomes incar- 
nate in Christ, or else that one divine being or divine essence 
becomes divided. If the former, then how is it that Christ speaks 
of the Father as sending him, and of himself as doing the will of the 
Father ? And how is it that he prays to the Father as a distinct 
being from himself? If the latter, then are we not driven to con- 
ceive of the one divine mind divided now into two, each having its 
own separate existence ; the one in heaven as supreme Deity ; the 
other on earth as Reedemer ? 

I reply : The view which we maintain supposes such a distinction 
eternally existing in the divine nature as admits of the manifestation 
in time of the Logos or Word ; not the whole divine essence or 



THE DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITY. 



345 



divine mind becoming incarnate in the person of Christ, but only 
the second distinction or hypostasis, the Logos. How this could be, 
of course, we know not. Great is the mystery of this godliness 
manifest in the flesh ; and any theory which should render the 
sublime fact of the incarnation less a mystery would be in that very 
respect suspicious. It is rather an argument in favor of the theory 
above maintained, than against it, that it makes no attempt at such 
explanation. 

And even if it were not so, is the difficulty now urged at all 
diminished if, instead of this, we adopt some other theory ? Sup- 
pose, for example, we take the theory of three distinct minds 
co-existing in one essence. When one of these minds becomes 
incarnate, the others remaining as before, is not the one essence 
thus divided ? Or take the theory of one mind with three distinct 
consciousnesses, sensibilities, and wills ; one of which sets of mental 
attributes becomes incarnate, the others not. Is there not here 
again, the very same difficulty as before — a division of this one 
mind or essence ? To say nothing of the fact that it is inconceiv- 
able, not to say impossible, that one mind should possess the facul- 
ties of three minds, it is a supposition which when made relieves the 
difficulty not one whit, but is open to the very same objection. 

Note D. — Page 322. 
It may be thought by some that the argument in this article 
against the theory of three divine minds in one Divine Being, and 
the theory that there are three divine intellects, three divine con- 
sciousnesses, sensitivities, and wills, in one Divine Being, is incon- 
clusive ; inasmuch as it does not recognize the metaphysical distinc- 
tion, often employed by the advocates of these theories, between 
essence or substance or substratum, and attributes or properties. It 
may be said by the advocates of these theories : True, the Father, 
the Son, and the Holy Spirit, are one in essence, but are distinct 
and three in attributes ; we believe as firmly as you that they are 
one in essence or substratum ; but we also believe, say the advocates 
of one theory, that in that one essence inhere three divine minds, 
each thinking, feeling, willing, acting, for himself ; or, we believe, 
say the advocates of the other theory, that the Father, the Son, and 
the Holy Spirit have each his own distinct intellect, consciousness 
and will. 



346 



STUDIES IN THEOLOGY. 



This metaphysical distinction and statement, in our view, does 
not relieve these theories at all from the objections which we have 
brought against them. 

Take the boldest and frankest of these theories, — that there are 
three divine minds, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, in one divine 
essence or being. This same philosophy resolves every mind into 
essence or substance or subtratum, and attributes ; and thus we 
have, according to this theory fully carried out, three divine sub- 
stances or essences, with their attributes, in one divine substance or 
essence. 

Or, if we take the more cautiously expressed theory, — that in 
one divine essence there are three sets of divine attributes, three 
divine intellects, three divine sensibilities, three divine wills, — we 
see that it is not really diverse from the other, and is easily redu- 
cible to it. For what, according to this same philosophy, are in- 
tellect, sensibility or susceptibility, and will, but mental faculties, 
powers pertaining to a mind ? Or, rather, what are they but a mind, 
in certain classified relations, or operating in particular ways, — ex- 
ercising thought, feeling and purpose ? In other words, three divine 
intellects, three divine sensitivities or capacities of affection, and 
three divine wills, in one divine essence or being, are three olivine 
minds in one divine essence or being ; which, as we have seen, are 
three divine essences, with their attributes, in one divine essence. 



THEOLOGY AS A SCIENCE. 



347 



III. 

THEOLOGY AS A SCIENCE — - ITS DIGNITY AND VALUE. 1 

When one enters upon the duties of a new and 
responsible office, especially when a new institution 
opens its doors, and invites the educated and Christian 
intellect of the land to resort thither for professional 
training and instruction, it is expected of him who 
enters upon such duties that he shall set forth in some 
sort the claims of that department which he comes to 
teach — binding, with pious hand, what little wreath 
he can about the altar at which he is to serve. 

I am to speak, then, on this occasion, of systematic 
theology. And what, then, is Theology ? Is it a 
science, and in what sense? Is it a progressive science? 
What is its rank, as such, in the scale of sciences ? 
What, also, its practical value and importance ? These 
questions demand answer in the present discourse. I 
shall undertake to show that theology is a science; that 
it is & progressive science ; that it is of the highest rank 
and dignity as such ; that it is also of highest practical 
value and importance. 

I. Theology is a science. This is evident from the 
name itself; from any and every correct definition of 
the same. 

What, then, is theology ? What means the word ? 

1 An Ipaugural Address, delivered on assuming the Duties of Professoi 
of Systematic Theology in Chicago Theological Seminary, Oct. 20, 1858. 



348 



STUDIES IN THEOLOGY. 



Literally, the science of God. In a wider sense, however, 
I understand by theology the science of the Christian 
religion — the systematic statement of the principles 
and doctrines of the Christian faith. As botany is the 
science which explains the structure and laws of the 
vegetable kingdom ; as astronomy has for its object to 
unfold the arrangements and movements of the heavenly 
bodies ; as psychology is the science of the human 
mind ; so theology has for its definite aim and end the 
correct statement of those great truths and principles 
which constitute the Christian faith. 

But here we are met by the objection that religion, 
and especially the Christian religion, is entirely and 
eminently a practical thing, not a matter of theory 
and speculation, not a thing to be learned from books 
or taught in schools, not, in fact, of the nature of 
science at all — a simple matter of the heart, and not 
of the head. It becomes necessary, then, at the outset, 
to make good our definition. 

When we affirm that theology is a science, we do not 
affirm that science and religion are identical. There 
may be a science without religion, and a religion without 
science. So, too, there may be a science of religion. 
We maintain that there is, and that theology is that 
science. It was the great mistake of the Socratic and 
Platonic philosophy to make virtue and knowledge 
identical. For a man to do right, it was only necessary 
that he should know what the right is, since the right 
is always that which is most useful and best. But, 
alas, human history in all ages has but too clearly 
shown that to know the right is not always to do it — 
that virtue and knowledge are by no means the same 
thing. Religion, certainly, is not science. Yiewed as 



THEOLOGY AS A SCIENCE. 



349 



the relation or state of the individual only with respect 
to its Maker, religion is, as the objection asserts, a 
practical thing, a matter of the heart, and not to be 
learned from books and schools. It does not follow, 
however, that science has nothing to do with it, even 
as such — that there may not even be a science of 
religion itself. In one sense religion is an affair of the 
heart, not of the head ; in another sense it is a thing 
to be learned and understood, or misapprehended, as 
the case may be. For that feeling and faith of the 
renewed heart toward its God, which we call personal 
religion, is a feeling and a faith which rest upon divine 
truth as their basis, and that truth must be known in 
order to be believed. If, with pious Anselm, we may 
truly affirm, " I believe in order that I may know," 
with not less truth may it be said, I know in order 
that I may believe. The object on which my faith 
fastens must be an object of knowledge ; the thing 
believed must be a thing known, or supposed to be 
known. In order, for example, to believe in God, 
must I not, know of necessity, something respecting 
him — that he is and, in a measure, at least, what he 
is, and why I believe that he is, and that he is thus and 
thus ? So much, then, is evidently science. In order 
to the prayer of faith must I not know " that God is, 
and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek 
him" ? This, too, is science. 

Understanding by the term Christian religion, then, 
not so much the faith of the individual soul as the 
system of divine truth on which that individual faith 
must ever rest, it is evident that a science unfolding 
and correctly stating that system of divine truth becomes 
possible ; and not possible, merely, but in the highest 



350 



STUDIES IN THEOLOGY. 



sense desirable, and even necessary. Theology is that 
science. 

Botany, and astronomy, and psychology, to recur to 
the illustrations already given , are all practical matters ; 
they deal with facts, with concrete realities. It is 
their business to observe, to state, and, if possible, to 
explain those facts. They have to do with what is, 
merely, and not with what may be, or might be. Are 
they, then, on this account, the less to be regarded as 
sciences ? Science gathers, arranges, unfolds whatever 
is to be known of plant and planet and human mind ; 
and thus we have a botany, an astronomy, a psychology. 
In like manner, science gathers up the great facts and 
truths of the Christian religion, classifies, states, main- 
tains, and, so far as she can, explains them, shows the 
relation of each to each, and the beautiful order and 
harmony of the whole ; and thus we get a theology. 
The facts, the materials, are furnished in each case ; 
given, not invented ; plant, planet, laws and operations 
of the human mind, the great doctrines of revealed 
truth, these are not any of them of human device, but 
all and equally of divine origin ; but the science of 
these facts and truths it is for us to construct as best 
we can. 

Theology is a science, then, strictly speaking ; the 
science of the Christian religion, regarded as a system 
of divine truth. 

II. Theology, I further maintain, is not only a science 
but a progressive science. 

In some sense every science is progressive, and neces- 
sarily so. Science, it must be remembered, is not the 
thing itself, but only our knowledge of the thing ; not 
the plants, the planets, the laws of mental operation, 



THEOLOGY AS A SCIENCE. 



351 



the divine truths, but only our knowledge of these 
things. These things themselves, as objects of knowl- 
edge, may be complete, finished, perfect ; no further 
progress therein to be hoped for or desired. Our knowl- 
edge of these objects may, on the other hand, be very 
incomplete, wholly imperfect, and therefore capable of 
greatest improvement and progress. It is thus with all 
science. It is thus with our knowledge of Christian 
truth. In the truth itself, as given, revealed, there can 
be no improvement, no progress. It came from the 
hand of its Author as the stars came, and the flowers 
of the field, complete, nothing to be added thereto. 
But in our apprehension of divine truth great progress 
may be made, and is to be devoutly hoped for. In the 
course of centuries of human thought and profound 
study of sacred truth, it were, indeed, strange if no 
progress were made in the mode of apprehending and 
stating that truth. To suppose this, is to suppose that 
in one of the noblest, and at the same time most difficult, 
departments of thought and investigation to which the 
mind of man can devote its energies no advance is 
possible ; that as regards that department, with all its 
sublime and intimately connected and far reaching 
truths, there is nothing further to be learned, but all 
that can be known is already and completely known. 
Was, then, the science of theology complete as it came 
from the hands of Augustine or of Calvin, of Luther, 
of Owen and Howe ? May it not possibly have made a 
little progress, even since the days of Edwards ? Has 
the human mind made absolutely no advance in this 
noblest of all sciences since the Bishop of Hippo wrote ? 
When John Locke first proposed that the Epistles of 
Paul should be read like any other letters, that is, con- 



352 



STUDIES IN THEOLOGY. 



secutively, in a connected manner, and not as detached 
proof-texts, whereby their life and power were greatly 
diminished, if not destroyed, he took a step quite in 
advance of the mode then prevalent of interpreting 
Scripture. When, as Sir William Hamilton has shown, 
the Westminster Assembly of divines so far departed 
from the received standards, as to drop out of their 
system that cardinal doctrine of Protestantism, as re- 
ceived and taught by Luther and Calvin, and held 
essential by both — the doctrine of personal assurance 
of salvation as essential to a saving faith — some progress 
was made, we must think, in the manner of appre- 
hending divine truth. And when the New England 
theologians, taking counsel of common sense, distin- 
guished more definitely than had hitherto been done, 
between sin and depravity ; the one denoting the sinful 
act, the other the corrupt nature underlying all specific 
sinful acts, and from which all such acts proceed; the 
one, the sinner's own personal choice and conduct, for 
which he is personally guilty and responsible, the other 
a nature inherited from his ancestors, over which he 
had no control, and for which he is not therefore per- 
sonally responsible ; when thus they charge sin home 
upon the sinner who commits it, instead of allowing 
him to share it with the first parents of the race, or, on 
the other hand, compelling him to bear the blame of 
what was done centuries before he was born ; it would 
seem that in this, too, some progress was made toward 
a more sensible and correct view of divine truth. 

The distinction between natural and moral inability, 
which is of recent origin, might also be mentioned as 
an instance in point. When it is affirmed that the 
sinner cannot repent and obey God, it is of some con- 



THEOLOGY AS A SCIENCE. 



353 



sequence to know whether this inability is a want of 
any of the powers and faculties, mental or physical, 
that are requisite to such obedience, or simply a want 
of inclination or disposition to obey ; whether, in other 
words, it is really and properly a can not, or only a will 
not. Something is gained, therefore, when we make 
the distinction in question, provided the term itself is 
still retained. 

It were easy to name other points, in respect to which 
theological science has made progress within the last 
fifty years. May we not hope that something is still to 
be gained as regards both the clearer apprehension and 
the better statement of divine truth ; that as time passes 
on, and the human mind advances in all other knowl- 
edge, and science enlarges her boundaries in all other 
directions, light may break forth also upon that which 
is chiefest and noblest of all, the science of revealed 
truth. Indeed, so rapid is the progress of all other 
science, and so closely connected and interwoven is 
every science with every other, and all with this the 
chief of all, that it is impossible that the clearer appre- 
hension of the truths which lie round about our science, 
should not cast light, also, upon theology itself. 

Indeed the whole history of theology shows that in 
its very nature it is a progressive science. Those creeds 
and formularies in which it stands embodied to-day, 
are themselves the growth of time, the work of centuries. 
In the able words of a recent writer : "To shut up a 
single individual with the mere text of the Scriptures, 
and demand that by his own unassisted studies and 
meditations upon it he should, during his own life time 
build up a statement of the doctrine of the Trinity, like 
that of Nice ; of the doctrine of the person of Christ, 

23 



354 



STUDIES IN THEOLOGY. 



like that of Chalcedon ; of the doctrine of the atonement, 
like that of the Augsburg and Helvetic confessions ; of 
the doctrines of sin and predestination, like that of Dort 
and Westminster, would be to require an impossibility. 
It would be like demanding that a theologian of the 
year 150 should construct, in his single day and gen- 
eration, the entire systematic theology of the year 1850 ; 
that a Justin Martyr, e.g. should anticipate and perform 
the entire thinking of a thousand minds, and of seven- 
teen hundred years. And yet the substance and staple 
of all this vast and comprehensive system of divinity 
was in that Bible which Justin Martyr possessed with- 
out note or comment." 1 

There has been progress, then, in theological science. 
If this is so, as regards the centuries past, why may it 
not be so in the centuries yet future ? Who will say 
where this process is to cease ? where all further think- 
ing and all further advance is to be precluded ? Where- 
about on the line of human thought and progress shall 
the gate be shut down on all further inquiry, and the 
fixture of the given present become the finality of all 
coming time ? And who is to do this ? 

III. Theology is a science of highest rank and dignity. 
I claim for it not only a place, but the very chiefest 
place, among the sciences. It is, in truth, what the 
greatest intellects of the world have ever pronounced 
it ; what Plato and Aristotle, what Bacon and Leibnitz, 
among the philosophers, have called it, the queen of 
sciences. It moves among them as the queen of night 
walks the heavens, surrounded by ministering constel- 
lations ; or rather as a central sun, far shining, and 
lighting up with its beams the attendant orbs, and giving 

i Bibliotheca Sacra, July, 1858. 



THEOLOGY AS A SCIENCE. 



355 



to each its laws of motion. All other sciences point to 
this as their explanation ; they presuppose and involve 
this as truly as the movements of the planets presuppose 
a central source of attraction. Whatever science you 
select you come back to this as your final conclusion. 

It was a lofty and yet a just conception of the great 
master mind of antiquity, that among the various de- 
partments of human thought and knowledge, throned 
above and overlooking them all, there is a science of 
science itself — a first philosophy. Theology is that first 
philosophy, that science of sciences. To make good 
this high claim, it is sufficient simply to advert to the 
nature of the themes and objects with which it is the 
province of theology to deal. What science treats of 
things such and so great, or is so rich in its field of 
investigation ? Theology brings us at once into the 
immediate presence of some of the profoundest problems 
of human thought ; problems whose depth and difficulty 
have taxed and baffled the noblest minds in all ages of 
the world, and always will. Take, for example, the 
doctrine of God — the truth which lies at the very 
threshold of the science. What mystery surrounds us 
as we approach this doctrine ! It is veiled and wrapped 
about with impenetrable darkness, as Sinai of old, when 
the Most High descended upon it in his mantle of cloud. 
There is a God. The proofs of his existence we find 
not only about us, in external, material forms, but what 
is far more, and more to the purpose, within us, in our 
own moral spiritual nature. We need not go out of 
ourselves to find God. But what is that existence which 
we thus designate ? Who shall explain it ? that exis- 
tence, infinite and absolute, without beginning of days 
or end of years, unlimited by time or place, all knowing, 



356 



STUDIES IN THEOLOGY. 



all powerful, the same yesterday, to-day, and forever. 
The human mind, in approaching such a theme, is lost 
in the vain endeavor to comprehend its own thought. 

If the very existence of such a being is to us a mys- 
tery, the mode of that existence is surely not less so. 
What a problem, incomprehensible to man, lies here. 
Threeness, yet oneness. One, yet not so one as to ex- 
clude the threeness. Three, yet not so three as to be 
the less truly and strictly one. 

Or, turning to the great central fact in the world's 
history, the incarnation of this great and glorious being, 
God manifest in the flesh — God-man ; the God that 
" rolls the stars along," and that said once, " Let there 
be light," clothed now in such feeble flesh as we ; a 
babe in Bethlehem of Judea ; a man in Nazareth ; what 
mystery more grand and sublime than this has ever 
been conceived by man. 

Another and not less difficult problem, with which, 
in some form or other, theology has to deal, is the doc- 
trine of sin. What is it ? How came it ? Why came it ? 

What is sin ? Every conscious act of transgression, 
doubtless, is sin. But is that all ? Does sin consist 
entirely in such acts ? What shall we say, then, of the 
nature that underlies all such acts, and from which 
they all spring ? Is that nature, also, sinful, and in 
what sense ? A question not yet fairly settled. Does 
sin consist entirely in the voluntary act ? If so, what 
shall we say of the affections, that are not under the 
direct control of the will, and yet for whose specific 
action we are held responsible, as in the command to 
love God supremely, and our fellow men as ourselves ? 
These are questions involving no little difficulty, as the 
history of theological controversy abundantly shows. 



THEOLOGY AS A SCIENCE. 



357 



The simple fact that the ablest and most acute minds 
have held entirely different views, and reached entirely 
different conclusions, in respect to this matter, shows 
that it is a question not lightly to be put aside. 

And then, how came such a thing as sin ever to be ? 
How is it possible for a pure and holy nature to sin ? 
a question that has never yet been duly considered, but 
in truth one of the most difficult problems of human 
thought. How could a pure and holy mind cherish, in 
the first instance, an unholy thought ? a nature, all 
right, harbor a desire or affection all wrong ? There 
must have been such a beginning, and it must have 
begun in a pure and virtuous mind. The fact we know, 
but who can explain or account for it ? Is it the work 
of a tempter ? And who, then, is this tempter, and 
how did sin begin in him ? Driven to the wall in this 
direction, shall we say, with an eminent divine, that 
God is himself the efficient producer of the first sinful 
impulse of the creature ? " But God tempteth no man, 
neither is tempted of any." 

But more than all, and harder than all to be an- 
swered, why was such a thing as sin ever permitted, 
not to say produced, in the providence and under the 
dominion of a perfectly wise, perfectly holy, and at the 
same time, absolutely powerful God ? Great unsolved 
problem of the ages, this. No, thoughtful and well- 
informed mind will ever think lightly of this profound 
problem, or of any serious and earnest attempt at its 
rational solution. 

In truth, this whole doctrine of sin — what it is, and 
whence it is, and why it is — is one sublime and terrible 
mystery. Like the shadow that men call death, it con- 
fronts us on our way, and the self-satisfied theologian, 



358 



STUDIES IN THEOLOGY. 



intent on making all things plain, may well exclaim, 
as he meets this dread apparition in his path : 

" Whence and what art thou, execrable shape, 
That darest oppose my "way." 

It stalks on, questioned or unquestioned, through all 
the centuries of human history and human thought, 
beating down with its iron flail the pride of human 
intellect, putting to flight the subtleties of the schools, 
baffling the wisdom of the learned, and the faith of the 
devout. We may well apply to it that sublime language 
of Eliphaz the Temanite: " In thoughts from the visions 
of the night, when deep sleep falleth on man, fear came 
upon me and trembling, which made all my bones to 
shake. Then a spirit passed before my face ; the hair 
of my flesh stood up. It stood still, but I could not 
discern the form thereof; an image was before mine 
eyes ; there was silence, and I heard a voice saying i 
c Shall mortal man be more just than God?'" 

Such are some of the great unsolved problems of 
Christian theology. And yet, with all the difficulty 
which invests these themes, there is still a loftiness and 
grandeur about them, a quiet repose, that is refreshing 
to the mind. We stand before these sublime mysteries 
of our faith as one stands at the foot of Jungfrau, 
among the solitudes of the Alps, far removed from the 
cares and vices of the vexed and vexing world, all whose 
noise and movement die away and are lost in the dis- 
tance below, while you stand in the presence of the 
eternal hills, whose frowning and awful heights are to 
you indeed inaccessible, but in whose silence, and 
shadow, and strength, your spirit finds a calm, sweet 
repose. 



THEOLOGY AS A SCIENCE. 



359 



But it may be said to all this, Qui bono'? of what use 
are all these speculations ? Grant, if you please, the 
difficulty of the problems, and the dignity of the science 
that is ever taxing itself in vain to solve what can prob- 
ably never be solved by man, of what real value is such 
a science to the world and to the church, in this prac- 
tical, hard-working age ? 

I proceed then to show, 

IV. That theology is a science of the highest practical 
value. 

There are three respects in which this may be made 
to appear : in its relation to the prevalence of extreme 
and erroneous views in religious matters ; in its relation 
to the power of the pulpit ; and in its relation to the 
formation of personal character. And 

1. In relation to the prevalence of extreme and erro- 
neous views. The tendency in the religious world is 
and has always been to certain opposite extremes in 
matters of religious belief, which extremes are always 
errors. Nothing but a sound and true theology can 
either prevent or counteract such errors. 

For example : there has been a strong tendency to 
exalt, on the one hand, the province of reason; on the 
other, that of faith. The history of the Christian church 
is, in one of its aspects, a history of the conflict between 
these two opposite and extreme tendencies, rationalism 
and pietism. If the latter finds its home in the bosom 
of the Romish church, the former as manifestly finds 
something congenial in the spirit and principles of 
Protestantism ; yet to neither the one nor the other of 
these churches is the tendency to either of these prin- 
ciples exclusively confined. Early in the history of 
Christianity the conflict of these two tendencies begins 



360 



STUDIES IN THEOLOGY. 



to show itself. We see it in the Montauism and Gnos- 
ticism of the early church ; faith as against knowledge, 
and knowledge as against faith. At a later period, it 
reappears under the forms of mysticism and scholasti- 
cism, as in the Middle Ages. While in our own period, 
the pietism as opposed to the rationalism of Germany 
is but another manifestation of the tendencv to the 
same extremes. 

I need hardly pause to say here, that piety and 
learning, faith and reason, are both essential to a true 
Christianity, and neither can well and wisely be dis- 
severed from the other. If pious feeling needs to be 
enlightened and regulated by sound knowledge, so also 
does reason need to be made humble and devout by 
simple faith. The due balance of the two is needed, 
but that balance, as all history shows, is difficult to 
attain and to retain. Piety, a matter of feeling, a thing 
of the heart, tends to dissever itself from the reflection 
and abstraction of sober thought; while reason again, 
the speculative intellect, is restive under the restraints 
of faith, impatient to strike out a more daring and 
adventurous course, and to build on some other than 
the only sure foundation of all certainty in religious 
things, the word of God. Such knowledge becomes 
dangerous. But equally dangerous is the faith that is 
without knowledge. Jealous of speculation and inquiry, 
neglecting careful investigation and scientific culture, 
it becomes superficial, and degenerates into mere en- 
thusiasm or bigotry. On this infidelity seizes, and finds 
its fitting occasion. So goes all history of the Christian 
church. Nothing but a correct and sound theology, 
that shall strike the balance between these opposing 
principles, and assign each its due place in the Christian 



THEOLOGY AS A SCIENCE. 



361 



scheme, can effectually counteract the tendency to one 
or the other of these extremes. 

As another example of the tendency to extremes in 
matters of religion, I may instance the undue attach- 
ment to forms and organized ions, on the one hand, as 
opposed to the undue neglect of them on the other. 
Doubtless the church spirit, the denominational ten- 
dency has its use and end. It serves to bind more 
closely together the followers of Christ, thus united in 
church relations, and make them one in spirit and 
action. But give this principle undue place, and the 
church organization, the form, becomes speedily para- 
mount, and the doctrine, the substance of Christianity, 
comparatively overlooked. Now the whole history of 
Christianity shows the tendency of the human mind, 
in religious matters, to make more and more of the 
form, the outward visible organization, as time pro- 
gresses, to the relative neglect of the substance ; and 
in proportion as this is the case, the great doctrines 
and principles of the Christian system are suffered in a 
measure to drop out of sight and lose their importance. 
Differences of doctrinal sentiment are held of less 
account than differences of ecclesiastical order, and 
theology, as a science, dwindles and languishes, while 
petty questions of church organism, and petty matters 
of churchly furniture and form, become the paramount 
and all important topics of thought and study. 

The Puseyism of the English church is a perfect and 
legitimate illustration of the tendency to which I refer ; 
nor can any intelligent and observant eye fail to notice 
the rapidly increasing development of the same ten- 
dency in more than one of the great Christian organ- 
izations of our own country. 



362 



STUDIES IX THEOLOGY. 



Quite in the opposite extreme, and hardly less disas- 
trous, would be the entire neglect of forms and organ- 
izations. Absolute individualism is certainly not the 
normal condition of man, whether in matters of religion 
or of secular life. In church, as in state, there must 
be society and organism, body as well as soul, form as 
well as substance. Complete independence is not the 
highest form of Christian life, if indeed it be compatible 
with it. 

I have not time, nor on the present occasion is it, 
perhaps, needful, to show, by reference to the history 
of the Christian church, how to one or the other of 
these extremes the human mind seems ever tending, 
though more frequently, it must be confessed, and far 
more strongly, to the former than to the latter. 

There is no surer way to counteract this tendency 
than to bring forward the science of systematic theology 
into the front ground, and assign it its true place and 
rank. In proportion as the great truths and principles 
of the Christian system assume their just and proper 
importance, the little matters of mere ecclesiastical 
form and order dwindle into insignificance, and vanish 
away, as the stars disappear from the heavens before 
the rising sun. 

Closely allied to the error last mentioned is the pre- 
vailing tendency to make either too much, on the one 
hand, or too little on the other, of those creeds and 
confessions of faith, which at various times and by 
various bodies have been drawn up for the use of the 
Christian church. What is ancient is sacred. That 
which a former age has believed and practised is clothed 
with an authority inviolable, and bears with it the force 
of demonstration. Councils, decrees, confessions of 



THEOLOGY AS A SCIENCE. 



363 



faith, aside from their own inherent and proper value, 
gather thus a power and influence they were never 
intended to possess, an influence increasing rather than 
diminishing as time progresses, until it comes to be 
regarded as prima facie evidence of unsoundness in the 
faith if one ventures to differ, in never so slight a matter, 
from the standards that time has consecrated, and the 
piety of the church reveres. Now the men who drew 
up these ancient confessions may, or may not, have been 
wiser and better men than the world has since seen ; 
they may or may not have had superior facilities for 
arriving at a correct judgment in matters of doubtful 
and difficult adjustment. Their work may or may not, 
therefore, be justly entitled to a deference not accorded 
to other and more recent investigations and conclusions. 
It is certainly possible that the devout scholar of the 
present day, surrounded by all the aids and appliances 
of modern time, availing himself of all the progress that 
has been made, and all the light that has been thrown 
upon his path, progress in natural, in mental, in moral, 
and in political science, light upon matters of philology 
and matters of history, may, under these circumstances, 
bring to bear upon his work a mind not less thoroughly 
trained, and a degree of skill not inferior to that of the 
biblical student and divine of some preceding age ; he 
may even be in circumstances more favorable to the 
forming of correct opinions and an impartial judgment 
on the questions that were agitated in the councils of 
Nice and Trent, or the synod of Augsburg, than were 
the fathers who sat in those councils, and drew up those 
decisions and decrees. 

However that may be, it is the cardinal doctrine of 
Protestantism that no doctrines of men are binding on 



364 



STUDIES IN THEOLOGY. 



the conscience in matters of religion. Whether they 
be decisions of popes, or councils, or synods, or assem- 
blies of divines, it matters not ; whether they be decrees, 
or catechisms, or creeds, or confessions of faith, not one 
of them all, be they what they may, is binding on the 
conscience of any man, be he who he may ; but only 
the pure word of God, and every man his own judge 
of what that word contains. This is the root, the foun- 
dation and very groundwork of Protestant faith. Give 
it up, and you give up the very fortress and citadel of 
Protestantism. 

On the other hand, they are not wise who cry out 
against all creeds and formularies of Christian doctrine 
as useless, and worse than useless. It does not follow 
that because these things are not of binding authority, 
they are therefore of no avail. As guides of judgment, 
as landmarks to show where the old paths went, and 
in what w r ay the ancient worthies troclc, as helps to a 
correct decision in matters of doubtful moment, they 
are of high value. I w r ill not, indeed, receive them as 
authority, and concede to them my own right of indi- 
vidual judgment : but I will honor and respect them 
as the opinions of wise and good men, and as such 
deserving of respect. I will not ask what Athanasius, 
or Augustine, what Luther or Calvin, believed, in order 
that I may believe the same, and that because they 
believed it ; but I will ask what these men and others 
believed and taught that I may avail myself of their 
wisdom, and get what light I can upon the meaning of 
the sacred oracles, upon tire heights, and depths, and 
difficult mountain passes of the Christian faith. If their 
doctrine seems to accord with the inspired word, ration- 
ally interpreted and intelligently weighed, I will gladly 



THEOLOGY AS A SCIENCE. 



365 



receive it ; and all the more gladly that it is the helief 
of such men. If it differs from what, in my best judg- 
ment, God's word means and teaches, then in so far 
will I differ from them, and no man shall deprive me 
of this liberty. 

The tendency to an undue reliance on the formularies 
and confessions of a preceding age, or, on the other 
hand, to their depreciation and abandonment, finds its 
most effectual preventive in the diligent study and cul- 
ture of systematic theology as a science. As nothing 
tends more to check the progress and discourage the 
study of theological science, than to set up the claim 
of authority for the decisions of the past, thus making 
the system of Christian doctrine, as taught in this or 
that age, by this or that eminent divine, in this or that 
creed, or confession, or catechism, a fixture and a finality, 
thus virtually taking God's word out of our hands ; so, 
on the contrary, nothing will so effectually prevent this 
undue and exclusive reliance on the opinions and de- 
cisions of the past, as to elevate theological science to 
its proper place, and encourage men to study, diligently, 
and faithfully, and for themselves, the great system 
of truth contained in the sacred Scriptures, so as, if 
possible, clearly to apprehend and fully to master that 
noblest, sublimest, most difficult of all sciences, the 
science of the Christian religion. 

In relation, then, to all such extreme and erroneous 
views, as preventing and counteracting the tendency, 
whether to rationalism, or its opposite ; to undue 
churchism, or its opposite ; to undue reliance on 
creeds, and symbols of faith, or their undue neglect ; * 
systematic theology becomes of the highest practical 
importance. 



366 



STUDIES IN THEOLOGY. 



2. The practical value of our science appears, also, 
in its relation to the power of the pulpit. 

It would seem to be a clear case, that in order to 
teach well, a man must clearly comprehend the things 
which he teaches ; in order to speak well, and 'to the 
edification of the hearer, he must know the things 
whereof he affirms. If, as Cicero says, it is necessary 
for the orator to be familiar with all branches of knowl- 
edge, in order to speak well upon any subject, surely it 
is far more needful that he should understand well that 
one thing on which he is to discourse. He who is to 
present divine truth to men, in its simplicity, its beauty, 
its power, must understand divine truth, must grasp it 
in its outlines, and comprehend its relations, and all 
its fair proportions and harmonies, how each truth fits 
itself to each, and how every part contributes to the 
symmetry and proportion of the whole. Only the dil- 
igent study of Christian truth, as a system and a science, 
can enable him to do this. 

The most powerful and faithful preaching of the 
gospel is that which rests upon and springs from the 
thorough, doctrinal study of the Scriptures. That 
which has no other foundation than mere feeling is 
superficial, and in its results evanescent. That preach- 
ing which is to move with power, and strike efficient 
blows, must lay hold upon the truth with a firm grasp, 
and wield it as the club of Hercules. Every doctrine 
of God's word, each eternal truth, massive and strong, 
stoutly seized and boldly swung, must be in its hand 
like the battle-axe of Coeur-de-Lion, that never struck 
in vain. No feeble and vague apprehension of truth, 
no partial and confused vision, no irresolute and un- 
skilful handling of the divine armor can do this. He 



THEOLOGY AS A SCIENCE. 



367 



that would handle well the sword of the Spirit, which 
is the word of God, must understand his weapon and 
its use. And to this he must be well and carefully 
trained. The man who has no musical science, and 
no knowledge of the instrument, may as well sit down 
to evoke the hidden harmonies of the organ, and develop 
all its sweetness and its power, as he who has no thorough 
knowledge of the system of Christian truth undertake 
to present that system in such a way as to make its 
grand and solemn tones accordant and harmonious. 
In order to touch a single chord aright, he must under- 
stand the whole science ; in order to command a single 
key or a single stop aright, he must have at his com- 
mand the entire instrument, in all its parts and with 
all its powers. Suppose the preacher to discourse upon 
the divine sovereignty. Without a clear comprehension 
of the relations of this great truth to the other parts of 
the system, its exact place among the truths that lie 
round about, and closely connected with it, such a 
knowledge as only careful, thorough, and wisely directed 
study of the whole system and science can give, he will 
be likely so to present this doctrine as to clash with 
other and equally important trnths of the Christian 
scheme. He may so preach divine power as to leave 
no room for human freedom. Or if he treat of human 
ability, he may so present it as to leave no place for 
divine power and sovereignty. Urging his hearer to 
make to himself a new heart, he may so press upon 
him his own duty and responsibility in the matter, as 
to leave upon his mind the impression that the work is 
wholly man's, and that God has little to do with the 
sinner's conversion. Or seeking, on the other hand, to 
make his hearers feel their entire dependence on God's 



368 



STUDIES IN THEOLOGY. 



Spirit for their salvation, he may so present this great 
truth as quite to relieve their minds from the pressure 
of immediate duty and responsibility, and leave them 
waiting in security and sin for God's good time, when 
it may be his pleasure to convert them. In neither 
case will such preaching be powerful and effective. 
The gospel that is thus awkwardly and unskillfully 
handled is not the gospel that is mighty to the pulling 
down of strongholds of error and of sin. 

A sound theological training, so far from making 
men dull and ineffective preachers, makes them directly 
the reverse. It is the foundation and source of their 
power. The strength and efficiency of the pulpit, any 
where and at any time, is in direct proportion to the 
clearness with which the great truths of religion are 
apprehended by the preacher, in all their individual 
distinctness and their connected harmony. Who, in 
the days of Luther and Calvin, excelled those great 
theologians in the powerful presentation of truth from 
the pulpit ? Or what more effective preachers of the 
word, in modern times, than our own Edwards and 
Bellamy ? It was the theology of these men that made 
them strong in the pulpit. When Luther ascended 
the pulpit, princes and legates crowded to hear him ; 
peasant and noble were bowed and swayed with one 
common emotion. When Calvin preached, magistrates 
and senates trembled, and syndics hastened to recon- 
sider and revoke their decisions. It was no idle talk, 
it was no child's play with these men. Seizing the 
ponderous hammer of God's truth, and swinging it 
aloft, they brought it down with terrible effect upon the 
errors and follies of the time, smiting right earnestly. 
Yet Calvin and Luther were the great theologians of 
that day. 



THEOLOGY AS A SCIENCE. 



369 



Of the power of Edwards as a preacher every one 
has heard. Discoursing of the justice of God as dis- 
played in the punishment of the finally impenitent, so 
vividly did he set forth the terrible truth that had 
seized and possessed his mind, that the deep stillness 
which had crept over the audience as he proceeded, 
gave way at length to the sobs and groans of the agitated 
assembly. Of Bellamy, it is sufficient to say that he 
had it in his power to raise his hearers to their feet, or 
prostrate them to the floor, almost as one man, by the 
power of his discourse. It is related of President 
Edwards, that having listened to a sermon of Bellamy 
in his own pulpit, on a subject in which he was himself 
deeply interested, so fully was he carried away with 
the truth uttered and so lost to everything beside, that 
he walked homeward, earnestly engaged in conversation 
with the preacher, not noticing till he reached his own 
house that he had left his hat in the pulpit. 

Now it was not idle declamation nor empty rhetoric 
with these men, but the simple power of truth, clearly 
perceived, earnestly believed, distinctly and powerfully 
presented, that wrought such effects. It was the elo- 
quence of truth ; God's truth, God's eloquence, and 
not theirs. Their power as preachers lay in their 
theology. That was the highest and best eulogium 
ever pronounced upon a preacher, the answer of the 
simple-hearted but devoutly pious negro to the clergy- 
man, who asked him wherein consisted the great supe- 
riority of Bellamy's preaching : " Massa, he make 
God so great, so great!" Yet these men, so terrible 
in the pulpit, so strong, so earnest, were the leading 
theologians of that day. Said I not rightly, that theo- 

24 



370 



STUDIES IN THEOLOGY. 



logical science is of practical value in its relation to the 
power of the pulpit. 

3. The practical value of our science appears further- 
more in its relation to personal character. 

It has long been known that the pursuit, especially 
the intellectual pursuit, or profession, to which a man 
devotes himself, exerts a forming and controlling influ- 
ence upon his character ; makes him in great measure 
the man he is. In no pursuit, probably, is this effect 
more marked than in the sacred profession ; and in no 
respect, perhaps, is it here so great, as in the influence 
which theological study exerts upon the mind and 
character of its true disciples. There is no science like 
it to impart strength of mind, or earnestness of purpose. 
It quickens and calls into action the highest powers of • 
the soul. It taxes the intellect, it calls out the sensi- 
bilities, it demands the resoluteness of the will. It 
teaches the mind to scan with penetrating glance that 
which is high, and that which is deep ; teaches it to 
gaze steadily at objects whose brightness is fearful, and 
brings it face to face with difficulties of no ordinary 
nature, which it must seize and overcome. Wrestling 
with God's eternal truth, it gains strength from the 
very contact, and is thrown but to rise the stouter 
wrestler. Standing habitually in the view of eternal 
realities, at once the most sublime and terrible, it gathers 
an earnestness of purpose from the solemn presence 
before which it moves. The mind that is trifling and 
vain ; that lacks earnestness of purpose and sobriety 
of thought ; that is deficient in vigor of intellect and 
soundness of judgment, in clearness of apprehension, 
or in resoluteness of will, may do something, perhaps, 
in other pursuits and professions, but will find no place 



THEOLOGY AS A SCIENCE. 



371 



for itself in this — no footing for itself in these deeper 
waters, that rise above the mountains and submerge 
all the plains. 

Yet is the pursuit of this science not inconsistent 
with the gentler traits and finer impulses of humanity. 
The great theologians, both ancient and modern, have 
been of rich and varied powers, and of gifts diversified ; 
men of vigorous intellect, clear conceptions, strong and 
well-balanced mind, earnest purpose ; and yet withal 
of noble and generous heart, of ready sympathy, gentle, 
and alive to all the finer sensibilities of our nature. 
Lovers of truth they have ever been, and yet withal 
lovers of beauty, both in nature and in art, and lovers 
moreover of that innocent mirth with which a truly 
great mind ever sparkles, as the great ocean sparkles 
and flashes in the sun. Such, pre-eminently, were the 
early divines of New England ; men whose learning 
and piety were blended with a genial sympathy and a 
ready wit ; men not less quick at repartee than strong 
in argument, and whom it were not quite safe for a 
sluggish mind to meet in either encounter. 

It has been sometimes supposed that theological 
studies tend to make one crabbed and repulsive, selfish 
and unfeeling, abstracted from the joys and sorrows 
and wants and strifes of the great living and struggling 
world, absorbed in thought, and interested only in 
useless metaphysical distinctions. No impression can 
be more unjust. Minds that are by nature cold and 
unfeeling may, indeed, hold converse with this as with 
any other science ; may pass round about, and mark 
its defences, and count its towers ; may even pass its 
portals, and wander through its grand and stately halls, 
insensible to its true beauty and uninspired by its lofti- 



372 



STUDIES IN THEOLOGY. 



ness. But it is not the science that makes them so. 
And not such, in fact, have been the great theologians 
of the age. One need only look into the letters of 
Luther to find that he was a man of soul ; a man whose 
heart was not less active than his brain ; a man of strong 
affections and ready sympathies ; a man running over 
with wit and humor. Children climbed upon his knee, 
and found in him no unwilling playfellow. He had an 
eye also for the grand and the beautiful. From that 
lofty castle on the Wurtzburg, where he lay concealed 
for a time, he must have looked forth, not unmoved, 
upon the scene spread out below him. Nature in her 
gentlest as well as in her wildest moods had a voice for 
him ; and the little bird that perched on a bough by 
his window, taking no thought for the morrow, but 
singing its vesper hymn in quietness, and leaving the 
hand that holds the great round world to take care of 
it, and of the morrow, taught him also the sweet lesson 
of casting all his care upon the same mighty arm, the 
same kind providence. 

Luther's great peer and fellow reformer, Calvin, was 
a man of somewhat sterner mould. We look in vain 
in his pages for any glow of enthusiasm or touch of 
sentiment. His clear intellect transmitted the pure 
ray of truth unrefracted and undimmed, and no play 
of prismatic color tinged its simple brightness. Are 
we, then, to think of this man, so calm and so strong 
and so severe, as we find him in his writings, as having 
no gentleness in his nature, no sympathy with man, no 
love of the beautiful ; as being, in a word, all intellect, 
and no soul ? If so, we shall greatly mistake him. 
Few spots on earth combine in greater proportion the 
various elements that please the eye and the cultivated 



THEOLOGY AS A SCIENCE. 



373 



taste, and cast the spell of beauty over the willing mind, 
than the shores and waters of that fair lake on which 
Geneva sits looking ont in queenly pride. Along those 
shores did the great reformer never walk at even-tide, 
musing, his great soul in harmony with the scene ? 
And did he never, as he walked and mused, raise his 
eye to admire that beauty, and to rest for a moment 
on the snowy summit of Mont Blanc in the distance, 
lifting his broad shoulders against the sky ? 

We think of Knox, the Scottish reformer, as even 
more harsh and stern than Calvin ; yet his portrait 
belies him not. You see in that clear eye and that 
lofty brow, blended with vigor of intellect and firmness 
of will, a calm and lofty repose, a gentleness, and a 
refinement of soul, that mark the highly cultivated 
man. Cradled among the hills, and familiar with the 
solitude and wildness of the Scottish highlands, did he 
never, think you, climb of a summer or an autumn day to 
the top of Arthur's Seat, that overlooks palace and castle, 
city and sea, and enjoy a loveliness seldom surpassed ? 

Edwards was a man of giant intellect ; yet we find him 
pausing to admire the flower at his feet, and the beauty 
of the landscape, that seemed to him so full of the glory 
of God. We see him planting with careful hand the 
graceful elms in front of his dwelling, under whose 
shadow he might sit, and which still stand in majestic 
beauty and greenness, the ornament and pride of the town. 

It touches us to read, in the memoir of Bellamy, that 
letter to his daughter after the death of his wife : 

Saturday Morning, Sept. 3, before sunrise. 
" The solemn day is past ; and here I sit alone — not one left — 
all my children gone — my wife in the silent grave. My children 
and grandchildren will follow soon. This is not our home." 



374 



STUDIES IN THEOLOGY. 



It moves us, also, to a kindly feeling for the somewhat 
stern and stoical Hopkins, to hear that he would come 
down from his study, after meditating long on the glory 
and love of God as displayed in the atonement of Christ, 
and rubbing his hands together in an ecstasy of delight, 
walk back and forth across the room, his whole counte- 
nance beaming with holy joy. 

But we must not dwell upon a theme which has 
already carried us beyond the intended limits. Such 
as I have described were these men, who in their day 
stood foremost in the pulpit, and foremost in theological 
science ; men of strong and vigorous minds, of earnest 
purpose, resolute and fearless men, but of generous 
impulses and noble hearts. And such, need I add, is 
the style of men and of preachers that we of the present 
time need, and hope to produce. 

For this purpose the Congregational churches of the 
Northwest open here a school of theological training. 
They consecrate it, however, not to a sect or party, 
not to a creed or catechism, but to Christ and his 
church. The great eternal principles of divine truth 
they place at its foundation. On them, as on a corner 
stone tried and precious, let it rest. If those principles 
endure, if those truths stand, it shall stand with them. 
If they fall and come to nought, it shall fall with them. 

Of myself, I can only say, that as I contemplate the 
greatness of the work to which you have called me, 
and my own personal unfitness for it, of which I am 
but too painfully conscious, it is not without hesitation 
that I assume the duties of the chair in which you now 
install me. But your cordial and earnest welcome 
gives me courage and strength. I cast myself fearlessly 
upon your manly and generous hearts, and upon the 



THEOLOGY AS A SCIENCE, 



375 



strong arm of my God, who giveth wisdom to them that 
lack, and who hath said : " My grace is sufficient for 
thee " ; " As thy day. so shall thy strength be." 

And now, God, we commend to thee this institution. 
Be thou its strength and its defense. Guard it against 
the dangers to which it may be exposed. Sustain it 
during its years of infancy, and the struggles of its 
growth and early manhood. Raise up friends and 
helpers for it in its darkest hours. Let no dissensions 
or jealousies spring up among those who sustain it, to 
diminish its strength or mar its usefulness. Let it be 
a fountain open for the healing of the nations. May 
its streams mingle with the great current of the world's 
thought and feeling, to make it purer and better. 
When they who now with prayer and faith open and 
consecrate this institution shall have passed away from 
the scenes of earthly toil, may its streams, pure and 
sweet, still flow on to bless the world, and make glad 
the city of our God, until they shall at last be swallowed 
up in the river of life that flows from beneath thy 
throne. 



IV. 



PLACE AND VALUE OF MIRACLES IN THE CHRISTIAN 
SYSTEM. 1 

As in all warfare, so in the attack and defence of 
Christianity, the battle-ground changes from time to 
time as the enemies of the truth change their tactics, 
or direct their assault now upon this, now upon that 
point in the line of our defences. At present it is the 
supernatural element in Christianity that is more directly 
and fiercely assailed. Around this the battle rages. 
And, what is not a little remarkable, it is from the 
professed friends of Christianity, from those who call 
themselves its disciples, rather than from its open and 
avowed enemies, that this attack mainly proceeds. It 
is no longer the Jew, the Mohammedan, the Pagan, but 
the rationalist and sceptic, within the sacred precincts 
of the Christian temple, and before its very altars, who 
take it upon themselves to call in question, or utterly 
to deny, the supernatural element of the Christian 
religion. 

Miracles, we are told, are no longer to be relied upon 
as evidences of the divine authority of the Christian 
system. However appropriate they may have been in a 
remote and less enlightened age, they are now quite out 
of place. As civilization and science have progressed, 
they have left this method of thinking and reasoning 

1 From the Bibliotheca Sacra, Vol. xix. No. 7-i. April, 1S62. 

376 



MIRACLES IN THE CHRISTIAN SYSTEM. 377 



wholly in the back-groimd. It is now understood, by 
all cultivated and philosophic minds, that in the domain 
of matter everything moves on by fixed and determined 
laws, which are never violated, never suspended, and 
which never change. This invariable operation, this 
universal order and unity of physical causes, is the 
first principle of the laws of nature, and whatever is at 
variance with this principle must be unconditionally 
and unhesitatingly rejected. The material universe is 
discovered to be one great system of self-sustaining and 
self-evolving laws, a grand whole moving on in harmony 
and adequate to itself. Even the idea of original cre- 
ation is now coming to be rejected as an antiquated 
notion, in view of the recent developments of science 
with respect to the origination of species. In a word, 
any interference with or deviation from the established 
and eternal order of things, is a physical impossibility, 
which no amount of evidence can substantiate ; and the 
miracles, so called, of the Christian system, which in a 
ruder and darker age were considered as its main sup- 
ports and defences, are, in reality, at the present day 
the chief hinderances to its acceptance. 

Such is the position taken by the modern sceptic and 
rationalist. It is a position which the advocates of 
Christianity are called upon to meet. Mere denuncia- 
tion and reproach of those who thus reason, will not 
suffice. Ecclesiastical censure will not meet the case. 
There is a demand for thorough investigation and solid 
argument. The position is one which overlooks and 
commands one of the most important defences of the 
Christian system ; and to leave it in possession of the 
enemy, is to abandon Christianity itself as incapable of 
defence. Under these circumstances, it becomes nec- 



378 



STUDIES IN THEOLOGY. 



essary for the disciples of the Christian faith to re- 
examine with special care the whole matter of the 
supernatural element in Christianity, and possibly to 
re-adjust, in some respects, their own position with 
respect to it. 

There are, in any such investigation, three questions 
to be specially considered : What is a miracle ? What 
proves a miracle ? What does a miracle prove ? 

1. WHAT IS A MIRACLE ? 

It is of the first importance, in this controversy, that 
the advocates of the Christian system should understand 
precisely what it is that they are contending for, — how 
much and how little is involved in, and essential to, the 
idea of a miracle. If we mistake not, some uncertainty, 
perhaps we might say some vagueness, of opinion exists 
on this point in many minds ; some are disposed to 
include more and others less under that term. With 
some it means one thing, and with some another. 
Sometimes it is used to denote whatever is wonderful, 
as prodigies, portents, matters inexplicable, — the mir- 
abile of the Latins, the re pas of the Greeks. Others, 
again, restrict the term within much narrower limits, 
understanding by it some contradiction or violation of 
the laws of nature. By others, it is regarded as a sus- 
pension, rather than a contradiction, of those laws ; 
while yet others would prefer to call it a deviation 
from, rather than either a contradiction or suspension 
of, natural laws. A miracle, according to some, is a 
departure from all law ; with others, a departure not 
from all, but merely from all known law. 

What, then, is a miracle, and how much shall we 
include under it ? Is it any and every wonderful, 



MIRACLES IN THE CHRISTIAN SYSTEM. 



379 



apparently inexplicable thing ? Is it a direct violation 
or contradiction of the laws of nature ? Is it a suspen- 
sion of those laws ? Is it simply a deviation from 
them ? Is it a thing without and above all law, or has 
it laws of its own ? 

If we seek for that which is essential to a miracle, in 
distinction from what is merely incidental or occasional, 
we shall find the ultimate idea to be that of divine 
interposition to accomplish, by special and supernatural 
agency, a specific end not otherwise attained. Whether 
the result be a violation of the laws of nature or not, 
whether it be a suspension of those laws or not, it must 
at least be something beyond the power of mere nature 
to accomplish ; something supernatural, requiring for 
its accomplishment divine interposition and agency. 
Whether this agency be immediately exerted, or medi- 
ately, through human or other instrumentality, the 
power must be ultimately divine power, and that not 
according to the ordinary course of divine operations 
in nature. Where we have this, we have all that is 
essential to a miracle, — Deity interposing to accomplish, 
by special agency, an effect not to be reached in the 
natural course and order of events. 

This is accordant with the definitions given by stand- 
ard authorities. Thus Webster : " an event or effect 
contrary to the established constitution and course of 
things, or a deviation from the known laws of nature ; 
a supernatural event." The term miraculous he defines 
as, " performed supernaturally, or by a power beyond 
the ordinary agency of natural laws ; effected by the 
direct agency of almighty power, and not by natural 
causes." 

Johnson gives the following : " miracle — 1. a wonder; 



380 



STUDIES IN THEOLOGY. 



something above human power (Shakspeare) ; 2. [in 
theology] an effect above human or natural power, 
performed in .attestation of some truth (Bentley) ; 
miraculous — effected by power more than natural 
(Herbert) ; miraculously — by power above that of 
nature (Dryden)" 

The essential idea, as expressed in these definitions, 
is that of divine interposition and agency, not neces- 
sarily involving any contradiction or suspension of 
natural laws ; but only a power working above and 
beyond those laws ; praeter, but not of necessity contra, 
ordinem naturae. Whether the latter idea is really 
involved in the true notion of a miracle, we shall 
presently inquire. 

As the subject relates particularly to the miracles 
recorded in Scripture, a brief examination of the terms 
used in the Scriptures to denote miraculous events 
may cast light on the question before us. The terms 
most frequently employed in the New Testament to 
denote miracles, are Swdfieis , cr^^teta, and repara. 
When the idea prominent in the mind of the writer or 
speaker is that of the divine power, or source, from 
which the miracle emanates, the term Bvvdfiis (Hebrew 
rrn^f) strength, power, is employed ; plural, mighty 
tvorks. Thus the miracles of Christ are designated in 
Matt. xi. 20, 21, 23 ; xiii. 58 ; Mark vi. 5, 12 ; Luke 
x. 13 ; and those of Paul in Acts xix. 11. The term 
is also used by Paul himself, in his epistles, as 1 Cor. 
xii. 10 ; Gal. iii. 5. 

Where the prominent idea is not that of the power 
employed in working the miracle, or the source whence 
it emanates, but rather the object to be accomplished 
by it, its evidential force on the mind of the spectator, 



MIRACLES IN THE CHRISTIAN SYSTEM. 



381 



the term employed is an^elov (Hebrew nia) sign, by 
which anything may be known, and specifically, by 
which the divine power and presence may be recognized. 
Miraculous events are an pet a, inasmuch as they in- 
dicate or evince the presence and power of the Supreme 
Being. Thus, 1 Cor. xiv. 22, the gift of tongues is 
called " a sign, not to them that believe, but to them 
that believe not ; " and, i. 22 the Jews are said to re- 
quire a sign. So Jonah was a sign to the Ninevites, 
Luke xi. 80; and the child Jesus w r as to be a sign 
spoken against, Luke ii. 34. In all these cases, the 
miracle is designed as a token by which the unbelieving 
world may be convinced, and so, is an^'elov, a sign. 
Accordingly the various miracles wrought by or required 
of our Lord and his apostles, in proof of bis divine 
mission, are termed an^ela. Thus, Matt. xii. 38 and 
Mark viii. 11, 12, the Pharisees seek a sign from him ; 
that is, something miraculous, to prove that he was 
divine. So Luke xi. 16. So also John ii. 18 and vi. 30 : 
What sign showest thou ? and ii. 23 : Many believed 
on him, seeing the signs, or miracles. The miracle at 
Cana, John ii. 11, is spoken of as the beginning of 
miracles (signs), on the part of Christ. So also Nicode- 
mus, John iii. 2 : " No man can do these miracles (signs) 
which thou doest, except," etc. See also John vi. 2, 14, 
26 ; vii. 31 ; ix. 16 ; xx. 30. The term is also applied 
to the miracles wrought by the disciples in proof of 
their divine mission, after the ascension of their Lord. 
Thus, Mark xvi. 17, 20 : " These signs shall follow them 
that believe" ; " The Lord working with them, and con- 
firming the word with signs following." In these and 
the like passages we have the clue, if we mistake not, 
to the true significance of the miracles of the New 



382 



STUDIES IN THEOLOGY. 



Testament. They are tokens or evidences of the divine 
commission of the person who performs them. The 
cases above cited, under the term crr)p,eia especially, 
seem to refer to miracles as evidences producing convic- 
tion and belief in the mind. 

Where not so much the end or object of the miracle 
is the idea prominent in the mind, but rather the effect 
of it in exciting astonishment or fear, the term repas — 
wonder, prodigy — is employed; always, however, in 
connection with arifxelov. Thus, Acts ii. 19 : "Wonders 
in the heaven above, and signs in the earth beneath" 
(repara . . . arj/j-ela); vii. 36 : Wonders and signs in Egypt 
and the Red Sea ; John iv. 48 : " Except ye see signs 
and wonders, ye will not believe " ; Acts ii. 43 : " Many 
wonders and signs were done by the apostles." See, 
also, iv. 30 ; v. 12 ; vi. 8 ; xiv. 3 ; xv. 12, where the 
same expressions are used with reference to the miracles 
wrought by the apostles. The terms are sometimes 
employed, also, with reference to the miracles, or pre- 
tended miracles, of false prophets, as in Mark xiii. 22 
and Matt. xxiv. 24, and 2 Thess. ii. 9. 

The use of repa? in connection with arj/xelov, in this 
manner, is evidently borrowed from Hebrew usage, 
which in like manner connects the corresponding words, 
nirifit and D^raiE. 

A miracle, then, so far as the Scripture use of terms 
can guide us, is some wonderful event, such as requires 
divine power 1 to perform, and which may therefore be 
regarded as a sign or indication of divine presence and 
agency. 

That a miracle is not any and every wonderful or 
even inexplicable thing, we need hardly pause to affirm. 

i See note (A.) at the end of this Article. 



MIRACLES IN THE CHRISTIAN SYSTEM. 



383 



All miracles are wonderful, but not all wonders are 
miracles. Everything is wonderful on its first occur- 
rence. The first observation of an eclipse, of the erup- 
tion of a volcano, of an earthquake, or even a thunder- 
storm was, doubtless, very wonderful to the observers, 
and may very well have passed for something miraculous, 
as such events still do among the savage nations. 

It is necessary to the idea of a miracle that the event 
should be not merely wonderful, 1 but that it occur not 
in the ordinary course of nature's operations ; that the 
power which produces it should be the special interpo- 
sition of divine agency. This cannot be said of the 
eclipse, the storm, or the volcanic eruption. Such 
events, however remarkable, however fearful, and even 
unusual, they may be, are still within the range of 
natural causes, and to be accounted for on natural 
principles. But should the order of nature be reversed, 
or set aside ; should some event occur clearly beyond 
the power of natural causes to produce, and requiring, 
beyond reasonable doubt, the divine interposition and 
agency for its accomplishment, we should properly call 
such an event a miracle. 

Now it may be difficult to decide, in many cases, 
what is, and what is not, a natural event ; whether a 
given result lies within or without the range of natural 
causes ; in other words, to prove a miracle. That is 
not now the point under discussion. All that we say 
is, that when it is once clearly settled that the phe- 
nomenon under consideration is not merely some won- 
derful and unusual, but still natural event, but, on the 
contrary, is really supernatural, and has been brought 
about by some special divine interposition, working to 

1 See note (B.) at the end of this Article. 



384 



STUDIES IX THEOLOGY. 



accomplish this specific result ; then, and not till then, 
are we warranted to call that event a miracle. 

On the question whether a miracle involves a sus- 
pension or violation of the laws of nature, or is merely 
something above and beyond nature, there is room for 
greater difference of opinion. According to the defini- 
tions already given, the latter would seem to be all that 
is essential. On this point, however, theologians are 
by no means agreed. 

Neander, in his chapter on Miracles, 1 says: "Although 
from their nature they transcend the ordinary law of 
cause and effect, they do not contradict it, inasmuch 
as nature has been so ordered by divine wisdom as to 
admit higher and creative agencies into her sphere ; 
and it is perfectly natural that such powers, once 
admitted should produce effects beyond the scope of 
ordinary causes." Similar is the view of Olshausen, 2 
who affirms " that we cannot adopt that idea of a miracle 
which regards it merely negatively as a suspension of 
the laws of nature. Starting from the scriptural view 
of the abiding presence of God in the world, we cannot 
regard the laws of nature as mechanical arrangements 
which would have to be altered by interpositions from 
without: they have the character of being based as a 
whole in God's nature. All phenomena, therefore, 
which are not explicable from the known or unknown 
laws of earthly development, are not, for that reason, 
necessarily violations of law, and suspensions of the 
laws of nature ; rather they are themselves compre- 
hended under a higher general law ; for what is divine 
is truly according to law." 

1 Life of Christ, Book iv. Part ii. chap. 5. 

2 Commentary, Vol. i. p. 335, on Matt. viii. 1-4. 



MIRACLES IS THE CHRISTIAN SYSTEM. 



385 



In like maimer Trench : "But while the miracle is 
not thus nature, so neither is it against nature. That 
language, however commonly in use, is yet wholly 
unsatisfactory, which speaks of these wonderful works 
of God as violations of a natural law. Beyond nature, 
beyond and above the nature which we know, they are, 
but not contrary to it." 1 

To the same effect Augustine remarks : Omnia por- 

tenta contra naturam dicimus esse, sed non sunt 

Portentum ergo fit non contra naturam, sed contra 
quani est nota natura. And elsewhere he remarks : 
*' contra naturam non incongrue dicimus aliquid Deum 
facere, quod facit contra id quod novimus in natura." 
Augustine does not admit that anything comes to pass 
contrary to nature, since nature is but the will of God, 
and he cannot be supposed to act contrary to what he 
has himself established. " Quomodo est enim contra 
naturam quod Dei fit voluntate, quum voluntas tanti 
utique creatoris, conditae rei cuj usque natura sit ? " 2 

Aquinas gives a similar view; whatever is wrought by 
divine power, out of the usual course of nature, praeter 
ordinem naturae, is with him a miracle : " Aliquid 
dicitur miraculum quod fit praeter ordinem totius 
naturae creatae, quo sensu solus Deus facit miracula." 3 
Only it must be totius naturae, and not merely naturae 
nobis notae, of nature as known to us. 

The following is the view of Knapp : " Properly 
speaking these miracles are wrought by God. In per- 
forming them he does not alter or disturb the course 
of things which he himself directs, or counteract the 
laws which he himself has established ; but he ac- 

1 Notes on Miracles, p. 20. 2 De Civit. Dei. xxi, 8. 

3 Samma Theol., Lib. i. 110, Art. 4. 
25 



386 



STUDIES IN THEOLOGY. 



complishes by means of nature, which he has thus 
constituted, and which he governs, something more 
than is common, and in connection with unusual cir- 
cumstances." 1 

Prof. Tieftrunk, of Halle, holds the following language, 
as cited by Hahn : 2 " The supernatural cause which 
works a miracle, neither suspends nor confounds the 
laws of nature, but it uses the forms and materials of 
nature to accomplish its work. The miraculous consists 
not in being co ntra-n at ural, but eatfro-natural ; for the 
producing cause effects its operation in the sensible 
world according to the laws of sensible nature ; an 
operation which would not have taken place according 
to the ordinary course of nature, and could not have 
been produced by the mere causal powers of nature. 
The miraculous event may be compared to the unex- 
pected entry of an independent activity into the course 
of nature, but which does not obstruct nor subvert it ; 
only we must observe that this entry and its operation 
do not take place by any mere natural casuality, but 
by a superior power acting according to the laws of 
sensible nature." 

On the contrary, Wegscheider 8 defines miracles as 
unusual events, wrought by a cause superior to human 
power, and suspending the ordinary course of nature 
and its laws ; " humanas vires superantes, et rerum 
naturae cursum consuctum, legesque in efficiendo ejus- 
modi eventu tollentes." Nor is he without authority 
for this. Among the Lutheran divines, Quenstedt 4 
affirms : " Miracula vero et proprie' dicta sunt, quae 
contra vim rebus naturalibus a Deo inditam, cursumque 



i Theology, Vol. i. p. 101. 
3 Institutiones, p. 173. 



2 Jahrbuch des Christ. Glaub. 
4 Theologia Didactico-Polemica. 



MIRACLES IN THE CHRISTIAN SYSTEM. 



387 



naturalem, sive per extraordinariam Dei potentiara 
efficiuntur." So also Buddeus 1 (as cited by Knapp) 
speaks of miracles as " operationes quibus naturae leges 
ad ordinem et conservationem totius hujus universi 
spectantes, re vera suspend untur." 

Indeed, this would seem to have been the view very 
generally entertained by the earlier theological writers, 
as it is undoubtedly that of many among the moderns. 

We are by no means sure, however, that a miracle 
involves, of necessity, any violation or suspension of 
the laws of nature. That which is above nature is 
not necessarily contrary to nature. A work may be 
wrought by divine power, and that power may be 
extraordinary in its nature and operation, and so the 
effect may lie quite without the sphere of nature's laws 
and the usual course of things ; and yet it may involve 
no contradiction or suspension of any of those laws. 
A higher power may come in to accomplish a special 
result on a special occasion, yet leave the ordinary and 
established laws in full force. It is a law of nature 
that bodies of a certain specific gravity shall fall to the 
earth when left unsupported in the air or the water ; 
yet a stone, or a ball of iron, may be projected with 
such force as to counteract this tendency ; it may 
ascend, instead of descend, and so continue until, it 
passes out of sight. The law, however, still exists, 
still acts, — acts upon this very projectile, and that 
with its full force. The gravitating power is neither 
abolished nor suspended, as regards that missile, but 
only counteracted by another and superior force. The 
usual effect is set aside for the time by the intermission 
of a higher power. In like manner, when the iron 

1 Institutiones Theol. Dogmat., p. 245. 



388 



STUDIES IN THEOLOGY. 



swims, or the water burns ; when the flames fail to 
consume, or the wild beasts to devour ; when the 
raging tempest suddenly becomes a calm, or even 
death itself gives place to life, there may be in all this 
no violation or suspension of nature's laws, but only 
the coming in of a higher power to prevent the ordi- 
nary, and produce an extraordinary result — a coun- 
teraction, rather than a contradiction. 1 

Who will say that it may not be so? All that is 
essential to the idea of a miracle is the intervention of 
divine power to accomplish by supernatural means, 
whether directly or indirectly, a result not to be at- 
tained in the ordinary course of nature. But what is 
above and beyond nature is not necessarily contrary to 
it. That iron should swim may be extra-natural, 
super-natural, yet not contra-natural. Nay, there may 
possibly be, as some suppose, even within the sphere 
of nature itself, a power hitherto unknown, sufficient 
to produce that unusual result, requiring only to be 
called into exercise by the divine will when the special 
occasion demands ; and the result would be none the 
less a miracle, since it is the effect of special divine 
interposition, and is something beyond the usual course 
of nature. But whether the means employed are 
natural or supernatural, in either case the efficient cause 
is supernatural, and the event miraculous ; nor is 
there in either case, any necessary violation or sus- 
pension of the already-existing and established laws. 
Those laws may remain in full force, notwithstanding 
the coming in of this higher power. 

And so of the still more remarkable exertions of 
divine power, as, for example, the restoration of a 

i See note (C.) at the end of this Article. 



MIRACLES IN THE CHRISTIAN SYSTEM. 



389 



dead man to life. It is certainly not according to the 
usual course of events, and in tliis sense not according 
to the laws of nature, that a dead body should be 
restored to life. We know of nO power in nature 
adequate to produce this result. When such an event 
really occurs, therefore, we are warranted to infer 
divine interposition, and to pronounce the effect a 
miracle. But do we know that any of the existing 
laws of nature forbid such a result, and must be first 
abolished, or set aside, before this event can take place ? 
Want of power is one thing, and opposition is another. 
Inabilty is not incompatibility. The power to restore 
life may not be in nature, and yet may not be contrary 
to nature. 1 

A law, in the sense in which that term is here used, 
is simply an established mode of operation. A law of 
nature is simply such a mode of operation as results 
from the nature, or constitution, of things about us in 
the physical world. Now if an event takes place by 
some other mode of operation than that now defined, 
that is, by some mode of operation that does not result 
from the original constitution of things, the latter is 
not necessarily a violation of the former nor a suspen- 
sion of it. For example : The change of water into 
wine, by an instantaneous process, certainly is not the 
result of the original constitution of things in the 
physical world. It is not the way in which nature 
produces wine. But is it, on the other hand, a viola- 
tion of that method ? Nature, that is, Deity, operating 
in the accustomed manner, and according to the original 
constitution of things, produces wine by the processes 
of growth and fermentation. Now, he produces it 

1 See note (D.) at the end of this Article. 



390 



STUDIES IN THEOLOGY. 



directly, without this mediate process. Is there any 
contradiction here of the former method ? Is there 
any suspension of it, even ? Are not the laws and 
processes of nature still in force, as before ? Are not 
vines still bearing fruit, and grapes still yielding wine, 
just as ever ? The truth is, no law is violated, none 
suspended ; only another force is called into requisition 
in addition to the usual forces of nature ; or rather, 
the power, which usually operates in such or such a 
prescribed mode, now, for special reasons, and for the 
moment, acts in another and quite 'unusual mode. 
It is simply Deity doing, at one time, in one w T ay, 
what at other times, and usually, he does in another 
way. The result is something which we cannot ac- 
count for by the laws of nature, inasmuch as it was 
not produced by the operation of those laws ; in other 
words, it is a miracle. But in thus operating by a new 
method to accomplish a special end, Deity no more 
contradicts or violates his usual mode of operation 
than a man's travelling by steam-car contradicts his 
usual and slower mode of procedure by stage-coach, 
or than the appearance of a comet contradicts the 
established order of the solar system, or suspends the 
laws of planetary motion. The fact that God usually 
works in a given way does not prove that he never 
works in any other. Show any sufficient reason for a 
departure from the usual method, and such departure 
becomes not merely possible, but in the highest degree 
probable. There will be deviation, but not contradiction. 

The view now taken of the nature of a miracle 
obviates an objection frequently urged against the ar- 
gument from miracles in favor of Christianity, to wit, 
that they imply a contradiction or violation of the laws 



MIRACLES IX THE CHRISTIAN SYSTEM. 



391 



of nature. 1 Those laws, it is said, are universal and 
invariable ; and whatever occurrence professes to be a 
contradiction of those immutable laws bears on its face 
the evidence of its own absurdity and falsity. Now if 
it can be shown that a miracle does not of necessity 
imply any such contradiction or violation of natural 
laws — that, on the contrary, it leaves those laws in 
full force and play, while it comes in beside them, and 
reaches beyond them, to bring about results which are 
not in their sphere, which lie out of their plane — it 
is certainly a point gained and a difficulty met. 

The case is analogous to the reasoning of the sceptic 
against the mysteries of the Christian faith, that they 
are contrary to reason, and therefore incredible. To 
which we reply : No, not contrary to reason, but merely 
above reason. So we would say of miracles ; they are 
not contrary to nature, but above nature. 

But is a miracle a lawless thing ? Or may there be, 
on the other hand, a law of miracles ? Does the di- 
vine interposition which produces a miraculous event 
occur at hap-hazard, or according to fixed and uniform 
principles ? May there not be as close a connection 
between the peculiar circumstances which call for and 
demand the supernatural, and the divine interposition 
to meet the exigency, as there is between any ordinary 
result and the law of nature which looks to its accom- 
plishment ? Doubtless there may be such a connection, 
such a law of miracles. We are not to suppose that 
the laws of nature comprehend all laws. Could we 
see far enough into the nature of things, we might 
perhaps discover a fixed and invariable connection 
between the occasion for and the occurrence of a 

1 See note (E.) at the end of this Article. 



392 



STUDIES IN THEOLOGY. 



miracle ; so that we could say : Given, such and such 
things ; and given, also, divine interposition to meet 
the case. This we do not know enough to affirm, 
perhaps never shall ; neither, on the other hand, does 
any man know enough to deny it. 

Much less are we to conceive of a miracle as an 
event without cause. Whether there be or be not any 
such thing as a law of miracles, there is and must be a 
cause of them. If natural events require a cause, 
much more supernatural. We are not to think of 
natural causes as comprehending all causes. Because 
a thing is beyond the range of ordinary and natural 
causes, it does not follow that'it is beyond the range of 
all cause. To suppose that there is no cause except 
natural causes is not pantheism merely, it is downright 
atheism. It is to shut God out of the universe which 
he has himself created. 

To sum up what has been said. We are not to 
conceive of a miracle as simply any remarkable or 
extraordinary event, nor yet as of necessity a contra- 
diction, or even suspension, of any law of nature; we 
are not to conceive of it as necessarily a lawless occur- 
rence, much less uncaused ; but rather, and simply, as 
a divine interposition to accomplish by supernatural 
agency a specific end not otherwise attainable. 

With these remarks on the nature of miracles, we 
proceed to the second topic of investigation. 

II. WHAT PROVES A MIRACLE ? 

In other words, what kind and degree of evidence 
is required in order to prove that divine power is in 
any case interposed to produce a given effect, other- 
wise than by natural causes ? And here we are met 



MIRACLES IN THE CHRISTIAN SYSTEM. 



393 



at the outset by the positive denial that any amount 
of evidence can prove it — the denial, in a word, that 
a miracle is a possible thing. Thus, in the article on 
the Evidences of Christianity, in the " Essays and 
Reviews," Baden Powell holds the following language : 
" What is alleged is a case of the supernatural ; but no 
testimony can reach to the supernatural ; testimony 
can apply only to apparent sensible facts ; testimony 
can only prove an extraordinary and perhaps inex- 
plicable occurrence, a phenomenon. That it is due to 
supernatural causes is entirely dependent on the pre- 
vious belief or assumptions of the parties." 1 Again, 
we are told, by the same author, that " In nature, and 
from nature, by science and by reason, we neither 
have, nor can possibly have, any evidence of a Deity 
working miracles ; for that we must go out of nature 
and beyond reason. If we could have any such evi- 
dence from nature, it could only prove extraordinary 
natural effects, which would not be miracles in the old 
theological sense, as isolated, unrelated, and uncaused ; 
whereas no physical fact can be conceived as unique, 
or without analogy and relation to others and to the 
whole system of natural causes." 2 

In the same strain we are complacently informed by 
the same authority, that in the present age of physical 
research, " all highly cultivated minds and duly ad- 
vanced intellects have imbibed more or less the lessons 
of inductive philosophy, and have, at least in some 
measure, learned to appreciate the grand conception 
of universal law ; to recognize the impossibility even 
of any two material atoms subsisting together without a 
determinate relation ; of any action of the one on the 

1 Recent Inquiries, etc., p. 121. 2 Ibid, p. 160. 



394 



STUDIES IN THEOLOGY. 



other, whether of equilibrium or of motion, without 
reference to a physical cause ; of any modification 
whatsoever in the existing conditions of material agents, 
unless through the invariable operation of a series of 
eternally impressed consequences [the italics are ours] 
following in some necessary chain of orderly connection, 
however imperfectly known to us." 1 

Any interference with the established order of nature 
being thus assumed as a physical impossibility, which 
no amount of evidence can establish, we are not sur- 
prised to be told in this connection, that " if miracles 
were in the estimation of a former age among the chief 
supports of Christianity, they are at present among the 
main difficulties and hinderances to its acceptance." 2 

As regards the utter impossibility of miracles, on 
the ground of the absolute inviolability of natures laws, 
and the invariability and universality of their operation, 
we fear we must confess ourselves not of that order of 
" highly cultivated minds and duly advanced intellects " 
that " have learned to appreciate the grand conception." 
The real question for a mind thus far advanced, as it 
seems to us, is this : Is there a Deity at all ? Or is all 
power to be resolved into this great system of universal, 
invariable, eternal law — this grand machinery of " eter- 
nally impressed consequences," that goes grinding and 
clanking on from eternity to eternity ? If the latter, 
then we grant that miracles are out of the question. 
But if there be a God, as some of us in our simplicity 
have supposed ; if we may crave the indulgence of 
this highly cultivated age so far as to be permitted to 
retain the antiquated notion of a Deity at the head of 
affairs ; and if we place this Deity, where he belongs, 

1 Recent Inquiries, p. 150. 2 Ibid, p. 158. 



MIRACLES IN THE CHRISTIAN SYSTEM. 



395 



behind all those laws and above them all, as their source 
and spring, then why may not the power that usually 
works in and by such and such methods or laws, if occa- 
sion require, act in some other way, without or above 
those laws ? Nay, why may he not, if necessary to the 
accomplishment of his purposes, even reverse or wholly 
set aside for the time, those usual methods of procedure 
which we call laws of nature ? It would seem reason- 
able to suppose this. The power that created and 
established certain laws and operations of nature, so 
called, can surely, if he pleases, suspend those opera- 
tions and counteract those laws, by bringing in still 
higher forces on special occasions and for special pur- 
poses. The laws are surely not so invariable and 
inviolable as to be beyond the reach of their Maker; 
the sublime machinery of eternally impressed conse- 
quences is not so unvarying and irresistible in its 
steady revolutions, but that the hand which created 
and set it agoing can vary or suspend its movements at 
will. The qxiestion now is, sot whether Deity will do 
this, or whether he is likely to do it, but whether he 
can. If he can, then miracles are not impossible. 1 

The truth is, no consistent theist can possibly main- 
tain such a position. The real question, when it comes 
to that pass, as we said before, is simply this : Are 
ice atheists, or have we dill a God? And he who coolly 
shuts the door in the face of Deity, and shuts him out 
' of his own creation, by assuming that nature's laws are 
absolutely invariable, universal, and eternal, and there- 
fore any departure from them is impossible, under 
whatever cloak of science or inductive philosophy lie 
may hide himself, is logically and practically an atheist. 

1 See note (F.) at the end of this Article. 



396 



STUDIES IN THEOLOGY. 



But granting that a miracle is not impossible, still, 
is it not in the highest degree improbable — so much so 
that no amount of evidence is sufficient to establish the 
fact of its occurrence ? That depends on circum- 
stances, on the end to be accomplished, on the reason 
for the thing. Not under all circumstances and on all 
occasions is a miracle improbable even. We can sup- 
pose cases in which such an occurrence would be 
highly probable. If the occasion, the end to be accom- 
plished, be something extraordinary and of unusual 
moment, especially if it be something not likely to be 
attained by ordinary methods, it is not in such a case 
a priori improbable that extraordinary means may be 
employed to effect that end. 

Suppose, for example, that it were proposed to make 
a divine revelation to man of truths not to be learned 
from nature — a case certainly supposable — how can 
this be done, save in some way beyond and above the 
ordinary course of nature's operations ? Such a revela- 
tion will be in itself a miracle in the highest sense ; 1 
and therefore there is no improbability that the mode 
of its communication may be something miraculous. 
Or suppose — the greatest of all mysteries and miracles 
— that God himself should see fit to become incarnate, 
is it improbable that a lesser and subordinate miracle 
should be wrought to accomplish this incarnation ? 

But even supposing a miracle were wrought, is it 
possible to establish the fact by evidence ? Is a miracle 
capable of proof? No, says Powell, for it is either 
within nature, and so is really not a miracle at all ; 

1 As Olshauscn has well remarked respecting Christ: "He himself was 
the wonder (repots) ; his wonderful works were but the natural acts of his 
being." — Com. i. p. 335. 



MIRACLES IN THE CHRISTIAN SYSTEM. 



397 



or it is beyond nature, and so beyond the range of evi- 
dence and within the domain of faith. No, says 
Hume, for it is contrary to human experience, and 
therefore incredible. No, says Strauss, for the case is 
insupposable ; a miracle is an impossibility ; the invio- 
lability of the chain of second causes is a self-evident 
truth, and no amount of evidence is sufficient to set 
aside such a truth. 

This latter position we have already sufficiently con- 
sidered. It is a position which only the atheist can 
consistently hold. Nor is it to be admitted as a self- 
evident truth that the laws of nature are inviolable 
and invariable. We demand proof of this. It is a 
position assumed by Strauss and those who agree with 
him, but nowhere proved. So far from being a self- 
evident truth, it is not a truth, at all. The power that 
makes can unmake, vary, suspend. Nor even if this 
were so, would it render miracles impossible, since, as 
we have already shown, a miracle does not of necessity 
imply any contradiction or violation of natural law. 

The position of Hume, that a miracle is contrary to 
human experience, and therefore incredible, deserves a 
more careful consideration than it has in all cases 
received from those who have undertaken to answer it. 
We do not propose here to discuss the matter in all 
its bearings ; it is sufficient to our present purpose to 
say that neither the major nor minor premise of this 
argument is admissible. It is not true, as the minor 
premise asserts, that miracles are contrary to all human 
experience. This is assumed, and it is an assumption 
which begs the whole question in dispute. That mir- 
acles are contrary to general experience is very true ; 
else they would not be miracles. That they are con- 



398 



STUDIES IN THEOLOGY. 



trary to all human experience, we deny. So far from 
this, if we may believe anything which does not fall 
under our own immediate observation, instances of 
divine interposition have been occurring from time to 
time, along a large part of the course of human history. 
It is beyond all reasonable doubt that such instances 
occurred in connection with the promulgation both of 
the Jewish, and afterward of the Christian systems. 
Just where it would be, a priori, probable that they 
would occur ; just where they were needed to give 
authority to a religious system purporting to be of 
divine origin ; just where we should reasonably expect 
to find them if such things ever do occur, just there we 
meet with them. The facts are well attested and 
unquestionable. The statements clear, full, explicit. 
The instances, though rare, yet, in the aggregate, are 
numerous. The witnesses are many. They were men 
of honesty and sobriety, of good character and good 
sense. They testify to plain facts, about which there 
could well be no mistake. They appeal to their con- 
temporaries for the truth of their statements ; and that 
testimony goes uncontradicted, nay, is confirmed, by 
their enemies. There can be no reasonable doubt that 
the remarkable events to which they testify did really 
occur ; and as little doubt that the occurrences in 
question were such as come under our definition of a 
miracle. They are such as certainly do not occur in 
the ordinary course of nature, inexplicable by any 
known laws and forces, to be accounted for only by 
admitting special divine interposition. 

Now it is quite too late, in the face of all these facts, 
for the sceptic to come in with the cool assumption that 
miracles are contrary to human experience. They 



MIRACLES IN THE CHRISTIAN SYSTEM. 



399 



may be contrary to his experience and to ours ; but 
why should we set up our individual experience against 
that of all past ages and of so many witnesses. The 
fact that Mr. Hume, or any number of men, did not 
see a miracle does not prove that nobody has ever seen 
one. Mere negative testimony cannot outweigh posi- 
tive. At all events, it is a sheer begging of the ques- 
tion for any man to assert that miracles are contrary 
to human experience, when so many witnesses testify 
positively to the occurrence under their own observation 
of events which, if they really did occur as stated, 
mnst be admitted to be miraculous. 

Nor is the major premise of Mr. Hume's argument 
tenable. It is not true that whatever is contrary to 
human experience is, on that account, and of necessity, 
incredible. An event is not necessarily incredible 
because not known to have occurred before. Is it 
quite certain that nothing can take place in the world 
which has not already taken place ? Can nothing 
occur for the first time ? If nothing miraculous had 
ever occurred in the whole history of our world pre- 
vious to the introduction of Christianity, it would not 
follow that some events of that sort might not then 
occur, or that they would be altogether incredible if 
they should occur. Even if it were conceded, then, as 
it is not, that miracles are contrary to human ex- 
perience, it by no means follows that they are on that 
account necessarily incredible. 

But what shall we say to the position of Baden 
Powell, that a miracle is incapable of proof because in 
and from nature there can be no evidence of the super- 
natural, while that which is beyond and above nature 
is beyond the domain of reason, and ceases to be 



400 



STUDIES IX THEOLOGY. 



capable of investigation, "but must be received by 
faith ? 

True, vre reply, that which is from nature, that is, 
produced by natural causes, cannot be supernatural ; 
but not true that in nature, that is, within the limits 
and domain of nature, there can be no occurrence of 
the supernatural — not true that God cannot, if he 
pleases, work a miracle in nature, that is, among 
material, sensible things. 1 This point we have already 
sufficiently discussed. Nor is it true that whatever is 
beyond the power of natural causes to produce is 
there-fore beyond the domain of reason to investigate, 
and must be received, if at all, only by a blind and 
unquestioning faith. That is not for a moment to be 
conceded. That which is extra-natural is not of ne- 
cessity incapable of proof. The question whether a 
dead man was on a certain occasion restored to life is 
a question to be settled wholly by evidence and the 
investigation of reason. If the event did occur, clearly 
it was supernatural ; the laws and forces of nature are 
not adequate to produce such a result. But did it 
occur ? That is the real question ; and it is a question 
which falls as clearly and fully within the range of 
rational investigation and the laws of evidence as any 
question of physical science. 

Let us take a given case — the raising of Lazarus 
from the grave. Two inquiries at once arise: 1. Are 
the facts as here stated ? Did these things actually 
occur ? Was the man dead, and was he subsequently 
restored to life, according to the statement ? 2. If so, 
was the event miraculous? 

As to the latter, there can be no reasonable doubt. 
1 See note (G.) at the end of this Article. 



MIRACLES IX THE CHRISTIAN SYSTEM. 



401 



If the man Lazarus was actually raised from the dead, 
it was a supernatural event. It is not in the course of 
nature's operations for dead men to come out of their 
graves, and resume the functions of life. Her laws 
are not to that effect. It is well remarked by Dr. 
Taylor, that it is as much a law of nature that a dead 
man shall stay dead, as that a living man shall die 
when pierced through the heart. As to the other 
point, it is clearly a question which admits of evidence, 
and must be settled just as all questions concerning 
matters of fact are settled, to wit, by the testimony of 
credible witnesses. But hold, says Mr. Powell ; no 
testimony is sufficient to prove what is contrary to the 
course and order of nature. We take issue with him 
there. The testimony of competent and credible wit- 
nesses is capable of proving any matter of fact, any 
occurrence or event, as also of disproving it. The 
question being : Did this thing really occur ? Did this 
man, after he had lain three days in his grave, actually 
come out of it, at the word of command, and return to 
his home a living man ? The testimony of witnesses is 
adequate to decide that point. The question is not 
now as to the cause of the event, — how it happened, — 
but did it happen at all? And this is a question 
which men of common powers of observation and 
common honesty are capable of answering. 

So of the other miracles of Scripture. If the facts 
occurred as there stated, they are, in many cases at 
least, such as to leave no doubt of their being super- 
natural occurrences ; and they are, moreover, such 
things as make it easy to decide whether they did or 
did not really occur. 

But the so-called miracles, we are told, are, after 

26 



402 



STUDIES IN THEOLOGY. 



all, mere myths, fables, illusions. They never, in fact, 
occurred as narrated. The witnesses are, if not im- 
posing on others, at least themselves imposed upon. 
So Strauss. This is, of course, supposable ; but is it 
probable ? That the witnesses should invent a story 
utterly without foundation, and palm it off as reality 
upon those who must have known whether the events 
in question occured or not, and who would at once 
have contradicted the statement had it been untrue, — 
this, surely, is out of the question. On the other 
hand, that the witnesses, in common with all who were 
spectators of the scene, were deceived and imposed 
upon by mere illusions of the senses is hardly more 
credible. For the acts were performed publicly, in 
open day, and before the most prejudiced eyes. They 
were of such a nature that nothing would have been 
easier than to detect the imposition, if there were any. 
Take,- for example, the raising of Lazarus, or the 
healing of the lame man at the temple gate by Peter 
and John. The observers must have known whether 
such things really occurred or not — whether they 
were facts or illusions. They were not predisposed to 
believe, but on the contrary to reject, the evidence of 
anything supernatural in the case. They had every 
motive to do so, but were unable. " What shall we 
do to these men ? For that indeed a notable miracle 
hath been done by them is manifest to all them that 
dwell in Jerusalem, and we cannot deny it" said the 
sorely perplexed rulers. If there had been any reason 
to suspect imposition or jugglery, strange that such 
men should not have made the most of it. 1 

Evidently two courses, and only two, are open to 
i See note (H.) at the end of this Article, 



MIRACLES IN THE CHRISTIAN SYSTEM. 



403 



hiin who undertakes to discredit or disprove the mir- 
acles of Scripture. He must show that the events 
narrated did not take place, or else that they were not 
miraculous. The first is simply a question of fact — 
Did such and such things happen ? Was the man 
really dead, or really a cripple, and was he really 
restored in. the manner stated ? Now we maintain 
that on any question of fact of this nature the testi- 
mony of good and reliable witnesses — honest men, 
possessing ordinary powers of observation, and placed 
in such circumstances as to be able to observe whatever 
occurred — is perfectly valid evidence. The question 
for them to decide is not whether the thing is a miracle, 

— that is a matter of judgment which every man must 
decide for himself, — but did the thing actually happen? 
This it may not always be easy to determine. But 
when the acts in question are performed publicly, in 
the sight of all men, without attempt at secrecy or 
jugglery ; when they are of such a nature, moreover, 
as renders imposition and deception out of the question 

— as in the case of Lazarus, of the widow's son, of the 
lame man at the temple gate, of the man born blind, 
and a multitude of other cases, — it is easy for any 
man on the spot to satisfy himself whether such things 
were or were not done. And if he be a man of good 
character for honesty and veracity, his testimony as to 
the simple matter of fact — what he saw and heard, 
what be knew of the previous condition of the person 
thus restored, and of the change in that condition, and 
the manner in which that change occurred — is per- 
fectly valid testimony, and would be so taken in any 
court of justice in the world. 

The case is still stronger when we can summon 



404 



STUDIES IN THEOLOGY. 



upon the stand, as witnesses of the fact, men who have 
the deepest interest in denying the whole transaction, 
if it were possible for them to do so ; but whose reluctant 
testimony goes to confirm the actual occurrence of the 
events in question. And this is precisely the case, 
in many instances, with regard to the miracles of 
Scripture. 

We hear much of the fallibility of human testimony. 
You cannot rely upon it, says Hume. Men often de- 
ceive, are often mistaken and incorrect in their state- 
ments. It is more reasonable that something of this 
sort has happened in any given case, than that the 
laws of nature are reversed, or her uniformity dis- 
turbed. That, we reply, depends on circumstances. 
In the cases now under consideration, it is certainly 
more reasonable to suppose that the facts occurred as 
stated, than that so many men should testify to their 
occurrence under their own observation, and that, too, 
when in many cases they had the strongest motive for 
denying and contradicting the whole story, and yet all 
prove to be either false or incorrect in the statements. 

Laplace has shown, indeed, that evidence diminishes 
rapidly in passing through successive hands ; so that 
even supposing each witness to speak the truth nine 
times out of ten, by the time it has passed through 
twenty hands the chances that the last or twentieth 
witness speaks the truth are less than one in eight. 
To this it is sufficient to reply that, as regards the 
cases under consideration, — and the same may be said 
of the Scripture miracles generally, — we have our tes- 
timony, not from the twentieth hand, or even at second 
hand, but from eye-witnesses themselves, who speak 
what they do know, and testify what they have seen. 



MIRACLES IX THE CHRISTIAN SYSTEM. 405 



And here we cannot but inquire whether the case 
would be on the whole materially altered if, in place 
of the testimony of others to the occurrence of a 
miracle, under circumstances the most favorable to 
honesty, and also to accuracy on the part of the witness, 
we had the testimony of our own senses. Suppose we 
ourselves were observers of the whole transaction, — 
the question being still, as before, not, Was the affair a 
miracle ? but only, Did such and such a thing take 
place ? Was the dead man restored to life ? Was the 
lame man healed ? — have we now the means of decid- 
ing this question with any more certainty than before ? 
True, we have now the testimony of our own eyes, 
instead of those of others. But are we less liable to be 
mistaken or 'deceived in regard to a simple matter of 
observation than are other people under the same cir- 
cumstances ? Are our eyes more reliable than other 
eyes, our senses than other men's senses, our judg- 
ment as to what it is that we see and hear than other 
people's judgments as to the same thing ? Have we 
never found ourselves mistaken as to what we thought 
we had observed ? Would our testimony that we had 
ourselves seen and heard such and such things pass for 
more, in a court of justice, than the same testimony 
from any other honest and competent witness in the 
same circumstances ? 

Indeed, Mr. Powell admits that the evidence of our 
own senses can no more prove a miracle than the testi- 
mony of other witnesses. " The essential question of 
miracles stands quite apart from any consideration of 
testimony. The question would remain the same if 
we had the evidence of our own senses to an alleged 
miracle, that is, to an extraordinary or inexplicable 



406 



STUDIES IN THEOLOGY. 



fact. It is not the mere fact, but the cause or explana- 
tion of it, which is the point at issue." 1 

True, we reply, the cause or explanation of the fact 
is a point at issue ; but so, also, is the fact itself — that 
first and chiefly ; and till that is settled the other is 
of no consequence. Did this event really occur ? is 
our first question. Once satisfied of that, we may 
then inquire : Was the thing a miracle ? Now it is to 
the decision of this first question that we call in the 
testimony of competent and reliable witnesses as a per- 
fectly valid source of evidence ; and we maintain that 
a case may easily be conceived in which such testimony 
shall be equally conclusive of the fact with our own 
personal observation. 

It is worthy of remark that the two questions, Did 
the thing actually occur? and if so, was it a miracle ? 
stand to each other in a certain fixed relation. The 
more extraordinary and improbable the event, and 
therefore the more unlikely to have occurred, the 
greater the probability that if it did occur it was mirac- 
ulous. On the other hand, the less extraordinary and 
improbable the event in question, so much the less 
evidence is required to establish the fact of its occur- 
rence ; while, at the same time, so much the more 
difficult is it to show that the thing was a miracle. 

The case hitherto supposed — the raising of the dead 
— is clearly of the former class. Let us now suppose 
an instance of the latter — an event not in itself wholly 
improbable, and to which the testimony is conclusive, 
but with respect to which the real question is : Was 
the thing a miracle, or was it the effect of natural 
causes? The restoration of sight to the blind by a 

1 Recent Inquiries, p. 159. 



MIRACLES IN THE CHRISTIAN SYSTEM. 



407 



word ; the healing of the sick, without the use of 
natural remedies, by the mere touch of the hand, or 
even of the hem of a garment, or of the shadow of a 
person passing by ; the walking on the water without 
special mechanical appliances of any sort ; the calming 
a tempest by simple word of command — these and the 
like may fall, perhaps, under that category. There 
may be cases, doubtless, of this sort, where it will be 
difficult to decide whether the event in question is 
really miraculous. Still, if, as in the cases supposed, 
the effect produced be such as is not produced by any 
known physical law, such as lies not within the sphere 
of nature's ordinary operations, or even, so far as we 
know, of her operations at all ; if, in addition to this, 
there be a direct claim of supernatural agency in the 
case ; and further, if the occasion, the object, or end to 
be attained be such as appears to require some super- 
natural agency, the probability would seem, in view of 
all the circumstances, to be very strong that the event 
in question was brought about by some power above 
nature. Testimony, it will be observed, is not brought 
into the case to establish the miraculous character of 
the event, but only to establish the fact of its occur- 
rence. To that it is perfectly competent. That once 
settled, it is for us to decide by the exercise of our own 
reason and judgment whether the occurrence be the 
result of natural causes or not. 

But here we are met by the objection of Rousseau, 
that it is impossible to prove a miracle, because mir- 
acles are exceptions to the laws of nature, and we do 
not know enough of nature to decide in all cases what 
her laws are. It is true, we reply, that we do not 
know all the laws of nature. But we know what is 



408 



STUDIES IN THEOLOGY. 



the ordinary course and order of her operations ; and 
when an event so far transcends these as to be alto- 
gether inexplicable by any natural cause known to us ; 
when it is a thing the like of which was never known 
to occur under the like circumstances ; when, more- 
over, the immediate producing cause claims to be 
supernatural, and the object is one that might well 
demand such agency, we are warranted in presuming 
the exertion of a power above and beyond nature. 
We grant that the mere fact of our inability to account 
for a phenomenon does not prove it to be a miracle ; 
for there may be laws of nature of which we are 
ignorant, and of which this may be the result. But 
when the unusual and inexplicable event occurs in 
connection with circumstances that are themselves pe- 
culiar, and that would render the exertion of special 
divine agency not in itself an improbable thing, in such 
cases the conclusion is certainly a just and reasonable 
one, that the event in question is the result of such 
interposition, in other words, a miracle. 

And here we cannot but remark that the very uni- 
formity of nature, on which so much stress i* laid by 
those who deny the possibility of miracles, itself leads 
rather to the opposite conclusion in certain cases. Na- 
ture's operations are uniform and unvarying. We 
can calculate upon their occurrence with reasonable 
certainty. But here comes an effect quite at variance 
with all our previous notions and experience of those 
operations. May it not be the result of some power 
working above and beyond nature? Either this, or 
else nature is not, as we thought, uniform. Which of 
the two is the more probable ? 

It is time to pass to other topics; but we cannot 



MIRACLES IN THE CHRISTIAN SYSTEM. 409 



dismiss the question now before us without adverting 
to a point which deserves the consideration of writers 
on miracles. It is this : How far is the character of 
the doctrine, in confirmation of which miracles profess 
to be wrought, to be admitted as evidence of the 
miracles themselves ? Can Ve appeal to the character 
of the doctrine in proof of the miracle ? This is not 
^infrequently done. But if the divinity of the system 
prove the miracle, we cannot, of course, afterward 
appeal to the miracle to prove, in its turn, the divinity 
of the system, since this would be to reason in a circle. 
On the other hand, we cannot, perhaps, satisfactorily 
establish the reality of a miracle, entirely irrespective 
of the character of the system in favor of which that 
miracle professes to be wrought. If the system is 
manifestly false and pernicious, if the doctrine is at 
variance with the plainest principles of morality and 
true religion — this of itself is sufficient to discredit 
the reality of the supposed miracle. Reason assures 
us that God would not work miracles in favor of such 
a system. On the whole, the argument from the char- 
acter of the doctrine seems to be negative rather than 
positive. If the system be such as to make a divine 
origin not improbable, this removes an objection that 
would otherwise lie against the supposition of a miracle 
in its behalf. It does not of itself prove that a miracle 
was wrought. 

To sum up what has been said: In reply to the 
question, What proves a miracle ? we take the following 
positions : 

A miracle is possible. 

Not under all circumstances improbable even, 
On the contrary, under certain circumstances, may 
be highly probable. 



410 



STUDIES IN THEOLOGY. 



The testimony of witnesses to the occurrence of a 
miracle, under such circumstances, is valid and reliable 
proof. 

In other words, miracles are neither impossible to 
occur, nor impossible to be proved. The reality of the 
event is capable of proof by testimony ; the miraculous 
character of the event is a matter which reason and the 
common sense of men, in view of all the circumstances 
of the case, is competent to decide. 

We proceed to the consideration of the remaining 
question. 

IH. WHAT DOES A MIRACLE PROVE? 

What the value and significance of it ? What place 
shall we assign it in the scale of evidence, and what 
weight allow it ? Does it, in fact, prove anything ? If 
so, what ? If it were once of value at the time of its 
occurrence, has it not lost its evidential force in the 
lapse of time, so as to be no longer of service, but 
rather even to hang a mere dead weight on the system 
that is compelled to carry it ? These are questions of 
much moment, and the present age is called to meet 
them fully and fearlessly. 

There can be no question that there has been of late 
a marked and increasing tendency on the part of the 
cultivated, and especially the scientific, mind of the 
age, to look with less favor than formerly upon the 
external evidences of Christianity, and particularly to 
disparage the evidence from miracles. It is contended 
by many that Christianity carries its own evidence with 
it, in the simplicity and purity of its doctrine, and in 
its power to elevate the character and reform the life. 
This intrinsic and internal is the real evidence, we are 
told — all that it needs. Thus Coleridge, who even 



MIRACLES IX THE CHRISTIAN SYSTEM. 



411 



goes so far as emphatically to protest against bringing 
miracles to prove a religions truth, the belief of which 
should be voluntary, and not compulsory, with the 
understanding. In the same strain Mr. Newman, in 
his Phases of Faith, maintains that external testimony 
should not be allowed to overrule the internal convic- 
tions of the mind, and that no moral truth ought to be 
received in mere obedience to a miracle of sense. Of 
those who would thus discard almost entirely the ex- 
ternal evidences of Christianity and the evidential force 
of miracles, some are among the zealous supporters of 
the Christian doctrine in its purest form, while others 
belong to an entirely different class. The rationalistic 
theologians of Germany, as represented by Wegscheider, 
DeWette, and others of that school, take the same 
view ; while of the Lutheran school Doderlein hesitates 
not to affirm that the truth of the doctrine does not 
depend on the miracles, but we must be convinced of it 
on its internal evidence. Others, again, as Paulus and 
Rosennmller, while they would allow a certain degree 
of evidential force to miracles on their first occurrence, 
deny that they are of any value at the present day. 

Of those, on the other hand, who would still assign 
to the argument from miracles an important place 
among the evidences of Christianity, there are many 
who, instead of making this the sole criterion of a 
divine revelation, would receive it as of force only in 
connection with the internal evidence derived from the 
moral character of the doctrine, and of the general 
system in confirmation of which the miracles were 
wrought. This is, in fact, the view now, perhaps, 
more generally held by orthodox divines. It is the 
position maintained by Dr. Samuel Clarke, in his Evi- 



412 



STUDIES IN THEOLOGY. 



dences of Natural and Revealed Religion ; and also by 
Trench, in his Notes on Miracles. Similar is the view 
of Neander, who holds that miracles are not to be 
considered by themselves, as isolated facts, but only as 
a part of, and in close connection with, the whole self- 
revelation of God to man. 1 

As regards the general value and use of miracles, it 
is difficult to see how in any other way a revelation of 
divine truth could, in the first instance, be substantiated. 
In no other way, so far as we can see, can the divine 
authority of the teachers who proclaim such a revela- 
tion be established. 

He who comes with a claim to divine commission 
and authority is bound to make good that claim, — to 
show good and sufficient reason for it, — else we shall 
not believe him. We have a right to demand such 
evidence. How, then, shall he show this ? What 
shall be his token or sign that God speaks in and 
through him, and that the doctrine which lie sets forth 
is not only truth, but truth divinely uttered ? If now 
miracles are wrought in attestation of that authority ; 
if there is manifestly some divine interposition in the 
case, and not merely a pretence of such interposition ; 
once satisfied of that fact, and that there is no deception 
in the matter, we cannot but admit that the claim is 
sustained. The man comes before us with a claim to 
divine authority, and appeals to the divine omnipotence 
to establish that claim. The appeal is sustained. 
Works which are beyond the course of nature, and 

1 So Gerhard (as cited by Trench), who even goes so far as to say: 
" miracula sunt doctrinae tessarae, ac sigilla; queraadmodum igitur sigil- 
lum a literis avulsum nihil probat, ita quoaue miracula sine doctrina nihil 
valent." — Loc. Theol., loc. 23, c. 11. 



MIRACLES IN THE CHRISTIAN SYSTEM. 413 

which only divine power can accomplish, are wrought 
in confirmation of the claim and of the doctrine. It 
cannot be that God would interpose in behalf of impo- 
sition and a lie. It must be, therefore, that the man 
and the doctrine are, as they profess to be, from God. 

Now this is precisely the case with the first teachers 
of Christianity. They appeal to their works as evi- 
dence of. their divine commission and authority. So 
did Christ himself. He expressly places his claim on 
this very ground. " If I bear witness of myself, my 
witness is not true. There is another that beareth 

witness of me Ye sent unto John, and he 

bare witness unto the truth But I have greater 

witness than that of John ; for the works which the 
Father hath given me to finish, the same works that I 
do, bear witness of me that the Father hath sent me." 1 
And again, on another occasion : ".If .1 do not the 
works of my Father, believe me not. But if I do, 
though ye believe not me, believe the works; that ye 
may know and believe that the Father is in me, and I 
in him." 2 Accordingly, we find the Jews themselves 
acknowledging the justness and force of this principle. 
" Rabbi," says Nicodemus, " we know that thou art a 
teacher come from God ; for no man can do these 
miracles that thou doest, except God be with him." 3 
" And many of the people believed on him, and said, 
When Christ cometh, will he do more miracles than 
these which this man hath done ? " 4 So the man who 
was restored to sight : " Why, herein is a marvellous 
thing, that ye know not from whence he is, and yet he 
hath opened mine eyes. Now we know that God hear- 



1 John v. 31-33, 36. 
3 John iii. 2. 



2 John x. 37, 38. 
4 John vii. 31. 



414 



STUDIES IN THEOLOGY. 



etb not sinners If this man were not of God, lie 

could do nothing." 1 

In like manner the disciples, wherever they proclaim 
the doctrines of the new religion, are able to appeal to 
the miraculous powers conferred upon them as evi- 
dences of their divine commission ; and that not without 
success. Great fear, we are told, falls upon all, in 
view of the signs and wonders wrought by them, and 
multitudes, in consequence, are added to the number 
of believers. Now this is precisely what we might 
expect in such a case ; nor is it possible to see how in 
any other way the claims of the new system and of its 
teachers could possibly have been substantiated. 

It is objected by those who would place the evidence 
of the Christian system upon the internal rather than 
the external ground, that the miracles of our Saviour 
and his apostles cannot possibly be regarded as sub- 
stantiating their doctrine, or even their mission, inas- 
much as miracles are sometimes wrought by bad men 
and deceivers ; and if we admit the force of the argu- 
ment in the one case, we must also in the other. We 
fear that too much has been conceded to the enemies 
of Christianity by some of its best friends and advocates 
in respect to this matter. Thus Olshausen 2 affirms 
" that the Scriptures assert not merely holy, but also 
evil, power to be the cause of miracles," and that, in 
fact, " two series of miracles extend throughout scrip- 
ture history " ; and refers us in proof to the works of 
the Egyptian magicians, as opposed to those of Moses, 
and also to the signs and wonders which false prophets 
and which anti-christs are said in Scripture to be able 
to make use of, in order to deceive, if possible, the 

1 John ix. 30, 31, 33. 2 Commentary, Vol. i. p. 886. 



MIRACLES IN THE CHRISTIAN SYSTEM. 



415 



very elect. And we regret to find that so able and 
judicious a writer as Trench, whose Notes on Miracles 
blend so happily the true scholarly with the true 
Christian spirit, has but too closely followed the less 
reliable German in this view. " This fact," he says, 
" that the kingdom gf lies has its wonders, no less than 
the kingdom of truth, would alone be sufficient to 
convince us that miracles cannot be appealed to abso- 
lutely and simply in proof of the doctrine which the 
worker of them proclaims ; and God's word expressly 
declares the same (Deut. xii. 1-5). A miracle does 
not prove the truth of a doctrine, or the divine mission 
of him that brings it to pass." 1 

But do the Scriptures present two independent lines 
of miracles running parallel with each other, — those 
of the kingdom of light and those of the opposite king- 
dom, — as Olshausen affirms, and as Trench seems to 
admit ? Do they anywhere assert or imply that evil 
power is ever the efficient producing cause of a miracle, 
or that the wonders performed by evil men are real 
miracles ? These wonders are examples of the mirabile ; 
but are they examples of the miraculum ? They were 
wrought for the purpose of convincing, and hence not 
improperly are termed an^ela ; but were they real 
miracles, or only false and deceptive appearances ? 
Now it seems to us they are clearly of the latter sort, 
and that this is plainly implied in the scripture nar- 
ratives. The works of the magicians are expressly 
ascribed to the power of their enchantments. They 
were the tricks of conjurers, hardly more remarkable 
than many of the wonders performed at this day by the 
skilful jugglers of Egypt and India. As to the signs 

1 Notes on Miracles, p. 27. 



416 



STUDIES IN THEOLOGY. 



wrought by the false prophets, the same may be said ; 
while those of antichrist are expressly termed false or 
lying wonders. 1 There is no evidence that any of 
these were miracles, save in appearance only ; nor is 
there any evidence from Scripture that either bad men 
or devils have in any instance performed miracles, 
except as mere instruments of divine power. 2 

Indeed, Olshausen himself, in his commentary on 
the passage last referred to (2 Thess. ii. 9), expressly 
admits that, " as Satan himself is a created being, 
although a mighty one, the wonders also which he 
performs through antichrist can be merely mirabilia, 
not true mir acuta. ^ They are " mere magical mon- 
strosities." 3 And in the passage first cited, as if by 
way of furnishing the correction of his own previous 
remarks, he adds, in a foot-note on the very same 
page, 4 that " In so far as evil is merely a product of 
created powers, we may say that the satanic miracles 
are merely apparent miracles ; since miracles can be 
performed by God's omnipotence alone." What, then, 
becomes of the assertion that, according to the Scrip- 
tures, "not only holy, but also evil power" is "the 
cause of miracles " ? What becomes of the " two 
series of miracles" extending through scripture history? 
And what becomes of the objection to the evidential 
force of the miracles of Christianity ? Is a real miracle 
of no force to confirm a true message, because a sham 
miracle may be wrought to confirm a false one ? 5 

More consistent, though we think not more correct, 
is the position of Trench, who regards these wonders 

1 2 Thess. ii. 9. 2 See note (I.) at the end of this Article, 

3 Com. Vol. v. p. 331. 4 Com. Vol. i. p. 336. 
5 See note (J.) at the end of thi» Article. 



MIRACLES IN THE CHRISTIAN SYSTEM. 417 

of Satan and his false prophets as real miracles, and 
therefore as weakening, if not destroying, the prima 
facie evidence of the true miracles in favor of the 
mission or the divine doctrine of him who performs 
them. Yet in answer to the question, Of what use, 
then, are the real miracles? he affirms 1 that when 
once the doctrine has proved itself to be true and good, 
by commending itself to the conscience, the miracles 
may then come in as " the credentials for the bearer 
of that good word — signs that he has a special mission 
for the realization of the purposes of God in regard of 
humanity." 

Even as thus employed do not the true miracles 
prove both the message and the man to be from God ? 
But is this the whole force of scripture miracles ? 
Must the doctrine first be proved true, before the 
miracles wrought in connection with it can be admitted 
as evidence in the case ? Is it not enough that there 
is in the doctrine or system nothing manifestly untrue, 
or inconsistent with the supposition that it is from 
God ? This granted, do not the miracles come in with 
a positive force to substantiate the claim that man and 
message are divinely sent ? We would by no means 
contend that the miracle is to be taken in proof of the 
doctrine, entirely irrespective of the character of that 
doctrine ; nor, on the other hand, would we require 
the doctrine first to prove itself, and then to prove the 
miracle, which, in turn, once proved, is to come in as 
collateral security for the very foundation on which 
itself reposes. 

We would by no means disparage or undervalue the 
internal evidence of Christianity. It is good in its 

1 Notes on Miracles, p. 28. 
27 



418 



STUDIES IN THEOLOGY. 



place. To the humble, believing disciple it comes 
with convincing power. It is to him the best and 
strongest of all evidences that the system is from God. 
To one already convinced, or disposed to be convinced, 
the purity of the life and of the teachings of Jesus 
present an irresistible argument. But it is not to such 
persons solely or chiefly that the evidences of Chris- 
tianity address themselves. It is not the humble 
believer that needs to be convinced ; he is convinced 
already. It is the unbeliever — the man who is dis- 
posed to set aside the whole thing as unreasonable or 
unworthy of his notice, and to regard the teachers of 
the new faith as either credulous fools or cunning im- 
posters — that needs to be convinced that this despised 
faith, and these despised men, are indeed from God. 
Now with him the*internal evidence is not so likely to 
be conclusive. In many cases it will make no impres- 
sion upon him whatever. He will see no force in the 
argument, because not himself in a moral condition to 
be affected by such considerations. But let the earth 
open at his feet ; let the prison walls be shaken, and 
the iron gates touched by no visible hand fly back 
upon their hinges ; let voices from heaven be heard ; 
let sick men be healed by a passing shadow, blind men 
restored to sight by a touch, dead men to life by a 
word — let these things, and such as these, be done in 
his immediate presence, and in direct attestation of the 
divine authority of the new system, and from such 
evidence the stoutest sceptic will find it difficult to 
turn away. 

But it will perhaps be replied, the unbelieving scribe 
and Pharisee did turn away from precisely these argu- 
ments and evidences in the time of Christ and his 



MIRACLES IN THE CHRISTIAN SYSTEM. 419 

disciples, unconvinced even by the signs and wonders. 
True, they did so. But if they rejected Christianity as 
thus attested, how much more would they have despised 
and set aside its claims had it come to them with no 
such manifestation of authority. What impression 
would the purity of the character and the elevation of 
the doctrines of Jesus have made upon a prejudiced 
and unbelieving age, had there been no other evidences 
of his divine mission ? 

And here we shall be met by the objection that 
miracles are adapted to a rude and primitive age, such 
as that in which Christianity, for example, made its first 
entrance into the world — an age of great credulity 
and of comparative intellectual barbarism ; that while 
they are fitted to impress with awe the minds of men 
in such an age, they are quite out of place in the 
argument for Christianity in this nineteenth century. 
This is the key-note of the essay of Mr. Powell, to 
which we have so frequently referred. Rosenmiiller 
and Paulus also take the view that miracles were of 
evidential force only at the time when they were 
wrought, but have long ceased to be so. Similar is the 
view of Schliermacher, who regards them as, in fact, 
not miracles at all, except as relatively to the appre- 
hensions of the age. 

In opposition to all such views, we maintain that 
those miraculous manifestations of divine power which 
accompanied the promulgation of Christianity were 
adapted not to the age, as such, in distinction from 
other ages of the world, ^ not to any one age as being 
more or less enlightened, more or less credulous, more 
or less barbarous, — but rather to any age that is to 
receive a new dispensation or revelation from God. 



420 



STUDIES IN THEOLOGY. 



They are adapted not to one age more than another, 
save as one, and not another, is to receive that revela- 
tion. No increase of intellectual or scientific culture 
would have obviated the necessity for such divine in- 
terpositions, at any time when a new system of religious 
truth was to be inaugurated, and its claims to divine 
authority established. Indeed, if a new revelation 
were now to be made, miracles would be necessary to 
establish it. Nothing short of this would convince the 
very men who reject as unnecessary all external evi- 
dences of Christianity, that God was in very deed 
speaking unto them. The distinction now made be- 
tween the adaptation of miracles to the promulgation 
of a new system of divine truth, and their adaptation to 
the particular age in which that system happens to be 
first promulgated, is a distinction too obvious to require 
argument, but one which is wholly overlooked by the 
class of objectors to whom we refer. 

But, it will be said, even though miracles may have 
been useful at the first introduction of a new dispensa- 
tion, it by no means follows that they are useful now. 
In one sense, this is true. Christianity once established 
as a system from God, there is no further need of 
miracles to establish it. The working of miracles may 
thenceforth be dispensed with, unless some new occa- 
sion shall arise, demanding new interpositions of divine 
power. But it does not follow that the miracles which 
have been wrought, and on which the system depends 
for confirmation, are no longer of use. They are as 
much needed now as they ever were. There is no 
need of new piers to support the dome of St. Peter's. 
Pier-building, so far as St. Peter's is concerned, may 
be discontinued when once the dome is up and securely 



MIRACLES IN THE CHRISTIAN SYSTEM. 



421 



held in its place. It does not follow, however, that 
the piers already there are no longer needed, and may 
as well be taken down. This, again, is a distinction 
which certain minds of a " comprehensive capacity " 
fail to apprehend. Because miracles are no longer 
needed in support of Christianity, they conclude that 
the argument from miracles is no longer of use. 

Onr argument thus far proceeds on the supposition 
that the direct and special object of a miracle is to 
establish the divine commission and authority of him 
who performs it, and so of the truth or system which 
he propounds. For this it is needed. This it accom- 
plishes, and was designed to accomplish. But does it 
prove anything more than this ? Does it also prove 
the inspiration or divine authorship of the writings 
that record it? We think not. Miracles are wrought, 
not to prove the writings infallible and of divine origin, 
but to substantiate the claims of the teacher or prophet 
to be a man sent from God and clothed with divine 
authority. They prove the inspiration of the man, and 
not of the hooks or writings, as such. The miracles of 
Jesus prove his inspiration and authority and that of 
his doctrine ; but they do not prove the inspiration or 
divine authority of the Gospel of Matthew or of the 
Gospel of Luke. If the problem be to establish the 
inspiration of the Sacred Scriptures, the argument from 
miracles is not in place, unless it can be shown that 
miracles were wrought with a view to establish that 
inspiration ; but we know of no miracle wrought for 
this purpose. If, however, the problem be to establish 
the divine authority of Moses or of Paul, as speaking 
by commission from God, and so to confirm their 
teaching or message, the argument from miracles is in 



422 



STUDIES IN THEOLOGY. 



place and of force ; for it does prove that. And such 
is the use which Christ and his apostles actually make 
of the miracles which they perform, as shown in the 
passages cited above. They constantly appeal to them 
as evidence of their own divine commission : " Though 
ye believe not me, believe the works." 1 " Go and tell 
John what things ye have seen," 2 said Christ. To the 
same effect is the language of the writer to the He- 
brews : " God also bearing them witness, both with signs 
and wonders and with diverse miracles." 3 

To the question, then, " What does a miracle prove ? 
we answer, it proves the divine commission of him who 
performs it, and so the divine authority of his doctrine. 
It proves Christianity to be a system of divine origin, a 
religion sent from God. It is the broad seal of heaven 
stamped upon the system as its credential. This was 
the intention ; this the accomplished fact. 



1 John x. 38. 



2 Luke vii. 28. 



3 Heb. ii. 4. 



MIRACLES IX THE CHRISTIAN SYSTEM. 



423 



NOTES. 



Note A. — Page 882. 

We say such as requires divine power to perform ; for the idea that 
miracles may be performed by created beings, or even by evil beings, 
whether men or angels, other than as mere instruments of almighty 
power, finds, as it seems to us, no countenance in the Scriptures. 

Note B. — Page 383. 

The definition by Augustine : " Miraculum voco quidquid arduum 
aut insolitum supra spem vel facultatem mirantis apparet " (De 
utilitate cred. c. 16), is certainly faulty in this respect. It is, as 
Trench has well observed, a definition of the mirabile rather than 
of the miraculum. 

Note C. — Page 388. 

It is well remarked by Trench, with respect to the miracle of 
healing : " That it is sickness which is abnormal, and not health. 
The healing is the restoration of the primitive order. We should 
see in the miracle not the infraction of a law, but behold in it the 
lower law neutralized, and, for the time, put out of working by a 
higher ; and of this abundant analogous examples are evermore 
going forward before our eyes. Continually we behold in the world 
around us lower laws held in restraint by higher, — mechanic by 
dynamic ; chemical by vital ; physical by moral ; yet we say not, 
when the lower thus gives place in favor of the higher, that there 
was any violation of law, — that anything contrary to nature came 
to pass ; rather we acknowledge the law of a greater freedom swal- 
lowing up the law of a lesser. Thus, when I lift my arm, the law 
of gravitation is not, as far as my arm is concerned, denied or 
anihilated ; it exists as much as ever, but is held in suspense by the 
higher law of my will" (Notes on Miracles, p. 4). We should not 



424 



STUDIES IN THEOLOGY. 



say that it was even held in suspense. It not only exists but acts as 
forcibly as it ever did ; and the higher law of the will must counter- 
act it. 

To the same effect the gifted author of Nature and the Super- 
natural (p. 338). "A miracle is no suspension or violation of the 
laws of nature. Here is the point where the advocates of miracles 
have so fatally weakened their cause by too large a statement. The 
laws of nature are subordinated to miracles, but they are not sus- 
pended or discontinued by them. If I raise my-arin, I subordinate 
the law of gravity, and produce a result against the force of gravity, 
but the law, or the force, is not discontinued. On the contrary, it 
is acting still, at every moment, as uniformly as if it held the arm to 
its place. All the vital agencies maintain a chemistry of their own 
that subordinates the laws of inorganic chemistry. Nothing is more 
familiar to us than the fact of a subordination of natural laws." 

Note P. — Page 389. 

The distinction made by Fichte, between an event as being from 
natural laws, and as being according to natural laws, strikes us as 
well Grounded. An effect which comes under the latter designation 
does not necessarily come under the former. 

Note E. — Page 391. 

The whole force of Spinoza's argument against the miracles of 
Christianity, as also the chief strength of the assault by modern 
scientific rationalism, lies precisely here. The rationalist is careful 
to define a miracle as something contrary to the laws of nature, — 
a violation of fixed, established order. Set the definition aside for a 
truer one, and you set aside at once the main force of his attacks. 

Note F. — Page 395. 

It is maintained by one of our ablest modern naturalists, Dr. 
Edward Hitchcock (Bibliotheca Sacra, Oct. 1854, Article, Special 
Divine Interpositions in Nature), that so far from there being in 
nature any presumption against the miracles of revelation, there is, 
on the contrary, an actual and strong presumption in their favor, 
from the fact that, to all appearances, and according to all ordinary 
laws of reasoning, there have been in nature itself repeated in- 
stances of divine miraculous interposition. The first introduction 



MIRACLES IN THE CHRISTIAN SYSTEM. 



425 



of organic life upon the globe, which had previously existed as an 
inorganic mass, through long ages and many changes gradually pre- 
paring for the future abode of vegetable and animal life, is regarded 
as such an interposition. The subsequent and repeated disappear- 
ance of living species, and the production of new ones in their 
places, which, after flourishing for loug periods, have in turn disap- 
peared, only to give place to some new and independent system ; the 
introduction thus of new races and systems of life adapted to the 
changed condition of things, until we can trace at least five of these 
independent economies, is claimed as another evidence of miracu- 
lous interposition in nature. The final introduction of man himself 5 
upon the globe, at a period long subsequent to the introduction of 
vegetable and animal life, and the changes already spoken of, his 
appearance of a sudden, after these vast periods of time, and these 
successive independent groups of organic beings, had passed away, 
is another clear case of miraculous interposition in nature. 

Should it be objected to this reasoning that the appearance of any 
new phenomenon, as the introduction of a new species of plants or 
animals, for which we cannot account by any known laws, or trace 
its connection with any previously existing circumstances, does not 
of itself prove miraculous interposition, it may be replied that we 
have as good evidence of divine interposition in the cases referred 
to, as we have of direct creation in any case. If the first existence 
of life on a planet does not imply creative power and divine inter- 
position, neither does the first appearance of the planet itself in 
hitherto empty space imply such agency. The development theory 
of Lamarck and of the " Vestiges," and also the theory of Crosse 
on spontaneous generation, and the more recent theory of Darwin 
on the origination of new species by natural causes, could they be 
substantiated, would indeed set aside the argument for divine inter- 
position in the cases above cited ; but we see not why they should 
not also set it aside in all other cases, reducing what we have 
hitherto, in our ignorance, called creation, to mere development, and 
origination of new species by laws and forces already existing. It 
remains only, with Powell and other naturalists, to claim for these 
laws and forces an universal and eternal existence, and the circuit is 
complete. This point reached, and we have no further evidence of, 
nor indeed occasion for, a God, whether in or out of nature. Blank 
atheism is the upshot. 



426 



STUDIES IN THEOLOGY. 



Note G. — Page 400. 

The progress of] natural science in the direction of scepticism, 
if we may credit recent indications, is one of the most strongly 
marked features of the present time. To those of us who have been 
accustomed to entertain the old-fashioned notion of creation and a 
Creator, it is somewhat startling to be informed, as we are by Mr. 
Baden Powell, that this idea is now in a fair way to be exploded, in 
fact, is already rejected by philosophic minds ; that, on the high 
authority of Mr. Owen, creation is, in fact, only another name for our 
ignorance of the mode of production ; that, according to the unan- 
swerable argument of another writer, new species must have origin- 
ated either by development out of previously organized forms, or by 
spontaneous generation ; that, while naturalists have been disposed to 
deny the development theories of Lamarck, and the " Vestiges of 
Creation," and have refused their belief to the experiments of Crosse, 
or of Weekes, in regard to spontaneous generation, a work has ap- 
peared by a naturalist of the highest authority, — Darwin, on the 
Origination of Species, — which substantiates, on undeniable grounds, 
the principle of the origination of new species by natural causes, — a 
work, we are assured, " which must soon bring about an entire revo- 
lution of opinion in favor of the grand principle of the self-evolving 
forces of nature (Recent Inquiries, pp. 156, 157) ; that the grand 
law of conservation, and the stability of the heavenly movements, a 
principle now recognized by all sound cosmical philosophers, is only 
a type of the grand, eternal, self-sustaining, self-evolving, powers of 
nature (p. 151) ; that so clear and indisputable has the great truth 
become of the invariable order and necessary connection of nature's 
operations, moving on by grand, universal, eternal law, that not 
only all philosophical enquirers are now compelled to admit it as the 
basis of their investigations, but even " minds of a less comprehen- 
sive capacity," as, for example, theological and moral reasoners, are 
constrained to acknowledge its force (ib.). 

We might be disposed to raise a question as to the correctness of 
these sweeping statements, and startling facts and principles of sci- 
ence ; but as we belong to that class of minds which is of a " less 
comprehensive capacity," and as we are distinctly assured that the 
subject is really quite beyond our comprehension, and that it is 
" hazardous ground for any general moral reasoner to take, to discuss 
subjects of evidence, which essentially involve that higher apprecia- 



MIRACLES IN THE CHRISTIAN SYSTEM. 



427 



tion of physical truth, which can be attained only from an accurate 
and comprehensive acquaintance with the connected series of the 
physical and mathematical sciences" (ib.), we see no way but to 
make our bow and retire, with the best grace possible, from a vicin- 
ity so dangerous. 

Note H. — Page 402. 

The theory of Strauss, it should be remarked, pre-supposes that 
the narratives are not authentic. If the miracles are myths, fables, 
the inventions of romance, then the Gospels are the invention of 
some later period, and not reliable historic narratives. But it is not 
the Gospels alone which narrate • the occurrence of miracles. The 
Acts of the Apostles are full of them. So are the books of Moses. 
To make out the myth theory we must, in fact, reject not merely 
the credibility, but the authenticity, of the greater part of Scripture. 

Note I. — Page 416. 

The question whether miracles are ever wrought by any other 
than divine power, is very ably discussed by Dr. Taylor, of New 
Haven, in opposition to the views of Dr. Chalmers, who takes the 
ground that it is presumption to affirm that Omnipotence alone can 
set aside the laws of nature. (See Revealed Theology,Vol. iii. p. 396, 
et seq). 

Note J. — Page 416. 

The position of Olshausen is singularly inconsistent as regards the 
true force of the Christian miracles. " It cannot possibly," he thinks, 
" be the end of miracles to establish the truth of any affirmation. In 
the sense of Scripture, too, this is by no means the intention of mir- 
acles. It was only the people that so viewed them, because they 
allowed themselves to be influenced in their judgment by the impres- 
sion of power or the excitement of the senses ; for which reasons 
they attached themselves to false prophets as willingly, and even 
more so, than to the true. The Saviour, therefore, severely rebukes 
this eagerness for sensible miracles (John iv. 48). But when our 
Lord, in other places (e.g. John x. 25; xiv. 10, 11), calls for faith 
in his works, and connects them with his dignity and his holy office, 
this is not done in order to establish the truth of his declarations ; truth, 
as such, rather proclaims itself irresistibly to impressible minds by its 
inward nature." For what then, we ask, were the miracles intended? 



428 



STUDIES IN THEOLOGY. 



" They were intended rather," replies Olshausen, " to demonstrate his 
character as a divine messenger, for those in whom the impression of 
the truth, conveyed by the spirit and language of the Saviour had 
wrought its effect." (Com., Vol. i. p. 336). But in establishing his 
character as a divine messenger, do they not also establish the truth 
of his message ; and is not this really what they were designed to 
do ? For what purpose is it sought to establish the character of the 
messenger, but to make good the truth of the message ? To establish 
the truth of his declarations is the very thing in view. Even Olshausen 
himself admits this, in the sentences which almost immediately fol- 
low. In the human teacher, he says, though truth may greatly 
predominate, error cannot be conceived as wholly excluded. God, 
therefore, invested particular individuals, as his instruments, with 
higher powers, in order to distinguish them from merely human 
teachers, " and to accredit them before mankind as infallible instru- 
ments of the Holy Spirit, as teachers of absolute truth." Hence, he 
continues, " the gift of miracles is one of the necessary character- 
istics of true prophets, and serves to witness their superior char- 
acter, — to prove that they are to be regarded as teachers and 
guides of the faith, and free from all error" Precisely so. In 
other words, to establish the truth of their declarations and doctrines. 
The truth is, the object or end of the miracle is twofold — primarily 
to attest the divine character and claims of the messenger ; ulti- 
mately and chiefly, to attest the truth of his doctrine ; the former, 
with a view to, and for the sake of the latter. 



V. 



SIN, AS RELATED TO HUMAN NATURE AND TO THE 
DIVINE PURPOSE. 1 

There is, perhaps, no one topic in the whole province 
of theological investigation that presents to the philo- 
sophic and thoughtful inquirer more, or more formidable, 
problems than the doctrine of sin. It meets him in 
every direction, and always with a difficulty. Whether 
he turn his thoughts to the divine or human side of 
theology, — Godward or manward, — in either case, he 
comes directly upon this strange and unaccountable 
phenomenon. It stands like some fearful spectre in 
his path, barring further progress. 

There are two aspects in which this doctrine is of 
special moment to the theological inquirer. One is, 
the relation which it sustains to the nature of man; 
the other, its relation to the divine will and purpose. 
It is the object of the following pages, not to offer 
new opinions or advance a new theory on these top- 
ics, — that would be difficult to do, and of little use 
withal, — but rather to gather up in a resume, at once 
historic and critical, the leading theories which have 
been already advanced in respect to these disputed 
points. It is in this direction, perhaps, that progress 
can best be made, if made at all, in the science of 

1 From the Bibliotheca Sacra, Vol. xx. No. 79. July, 1863. 
429 



430 



STUDIES IN THEOLOGY. 



theology, as regards matters which have been so long 
and so widely under discussion as those now indicated. 
And first : 

THE RELATION OF SIN TO HUMAN NATURE. 

That human nature is corrupt is too evident to 
admit of serious question. The universal prevalence 
of sin ; its early manifestation and spontaneous devel- 
opment, under all possible varieties of condition and 
circumstance ; the difficulty with which it is in any 
case resisted and overcome ; the certainty with which 
it may be predicted in the future history of any human 
being just entering on a career of moral agency, all 
point in one direction — all go to show that the evil is 
not accidental, but radical, and that its root is deep 
in our nature. The propensity to sin must be innate, 
else why these characteristics ? What better evidence 
can we have that any propensity, disposition, or 
trait of character is native than that which is thus 
afforded ? 

The great problem is not to establish the fact, for 
that is already clear, but to account for it. Two ques- 
tions, in fact, demand solution. Its origin: Whence 
comes this innate propensity to evil in man? Its 
morality : Is such a propensity in itself culpable ? 
These are questions which no thoughtful mind will 
lightly ask, or answer without careful reflection. 

1. Its origin : How comes man to have a nature thus 
corrupt ? 

To this, many answers have been given. The sev- 
eral possible solutions may be resolved, if we mistake 
not, into the following: A. It is supposable that this 
nature was originally implanted by the Creator. B. It 



THE DOCTRINE OP SIN. 



431 



is supposable that it was acquired in some previous state 
of being, as consequence of some sinful act on the part 
of each individual. C. It is supposable that it is 
derived from a sinful ancestry, in whose loss of inno- 
cence their whole posterity is involved. This latter, 
again, admits of threefold statement, according as we 
suppose this derivation of corrupt nature to occur : a. 
By virtue of the generic unity of the race, so that 
the sin of one man is the sin of the whole ; or, b. By 
virtue of the constructive unity of the race with its 
first parent as representative or federal head ; or, c. By 
virtue of the laius of natural descent, like producing 
like. 

Of these several suppositions (A, B, C), each is 
possible, and one or other, it would seem, must be 
true. The innate propensity in man to sin must either 
be the work of God in his original creation, or else 
something which he has brought upon himself; if the 
latter, then it must have been in some previous state 
of being, or else by connection with a sinful ancestry 
in the present world. 

Of these theories, the first (A) requires at present 
little discussion. To suppose God the author of a 
depraved constitution in man originally, is to make him 
really the author of sin. It is to suppose him planting 
with his own hand the seeds of evil, with absolute cer- 
tainty of the result. God's work is not of that sort. 
What he makes is such that he can pronounce it very 
good. Man as he comes from the hand of his Creator 
is pure. How else could he be justly punished for 
sinning? It would be the height of injustice for God 
to endow man with a nature sure to lead to sin, and 
then punish him for sinning. Such inconsistency and 



432 



STUDIES IN THEOLOGY. 



injustice are surely not to be ascribed to the most 
perfect Being. 

B. It is possible that the propensity in question 
comes over to us from a previous state of being, in 
consequence of sin there committed. This would seem 
to have been the view of Origen. It is advanced in 
our own time by two distinguished theologians, Dr. 
J. Miiller of Germany, in his " Christian Doctrine of 
Sin," and Dr. Edward Beecher of this country, in his 
well-known " Conflict of Ages." Each, however, from 
a different point of view ; Miiller seeking merely to 
account for the fact of universal sinfulness ; Beecher, 
to justify the arrangement on the part of God by 
which man comes into the world with a depraved 
nature. Both find in this theory the only satisfactory 
solution of their problem. 

Of this theory it may be said that, while it is cer- 
tainly a possible, it is by no means a probable, suppo- 
sition. It supposes too many things — things which 
not only are not, but, in the very nature of the case, 
cannot be, established on reasonable grounds — things 
which do not admit of proof. It supposes : 1. That each 
one of the race has had a previous existence. 2. That 
in that previous state he was a moral agent. 3. That in 
the exercise of his moral agency he sinned. 4. That 
he did so without any previous bias or propensity to 
sin ; since this propensity is the very thing to be ac- 
counted for. 5. That his sin vitiated his nature. 
6. That he brought that corrupt and vitiated nature 
with him into the present state of being. 

Now all these propositions may be true ; but there 
is no evidence that one of them is so — none from 
reason, none from revelation, none from consciousness. 



THE DOCTRINE OF SIN. 



433 



The only argument in its favor seems to be that if 
true, it might relieve the subject of certain difficulties. 
But this in itself is no proof of the theory. It may be 
that other methods will also relieve those difficulties. 
The key in my hand may possibly unlock the door; 
but other keys may also do the same. It may be, also, 
that in the present instance the difficulties are such as 
are not fully met by any theory yet proposed. It is by 
no means certain that the key in question really will 
fit the lock, and open the door so long closed to human 
entrance. It is by no means certain that the divine 
character is to be cleared up, and the divine proceeding 
justified, by any such method. 

The real difficulty is to see how it could consist with 
the wisdom and justice and goodness of God to place 
man, while yet sinless, in such circumstances that he 
would be likely and even sure to sin. But this is a 
difficulty which presses equally on the theory of pre- 
existence. It has no advantage over any other theory 
in this matter, since it too admits and pre-supposes 
that man did sin in that previous state, and of course 
that he was placed in such circumstances that his sin 
was not only possible and probable, but sure to occur, 
for it did occur. If it is wrong for God to place men 
here in such circumstances, and expose them to such 
influences that they will be quite sure to sin, why not 
equally unjust for him to do it there ? 

Nay, the difficulty is not only not relieved, but 
actually augmented, by the theory under consideration. 
If the problem is to explain how one pure-minded, 
sinless being, Adam by name, came to sin, it is surely 
no help towards its solution to be told that the same 
thing happened once to every individual of the race — - 

28 



STUDIES IN THEOLOGY. 



that every human being is, in fact, Adam. This is 
simply multiplying the difficulty by just the number 
of the human family. If the problem is to show how 
God could be just, and yet leave man in Paradise so 
unguarded that he would certainly fall, it is surely no 
relief to be told that he left not one, but all, human 
souls in that predicament. 

Nor does the justice of the procedure shine forth 
more conspicuously in the subsequent stages of the 
process. To take each soul when once it has fallen 
and sinned, deprive it of its consciousness, of all con- 
sciousness of the past, reduce it to a condition of 
infantile weakness, subject it, in this condition and 
under these disadvantages, to a new probation, with 
the absolute certainty that thus placed it will sin, and 
to hang over it the doom of eternal death, if under 
these circumstances it should sin, — all this, moreover, 
as the penalty of that previous transgression of which 
it is wholly unconscious, — this is surely no material 
relief of the difficulty, nor a very satisfactory clearing 
up of the divine justice. 

The theory fails, then, inasmuch as it presents a 
series of suppositions unsupported by evidence, in- 
capable of proof, and which, even if admitted, tend 
rather to augment than to relieve the real difficulty. 

C. Since theories A and B fail to meet the case, we 
have this supposition, that the depravity "of human 
nature is derived from a sinful ancestry, in whose 
primal loss of innocence their whole posterity is in 
some way involved. There seems to be no other 
reasonable and probable supposition. This seems both 
reasonable and probable. To judge a priori, it would 
seem not unlikely that if man should fall it would 



THE DOCTRINE OF SIN. 



435 



affect his posterity in just this way-— that they would 
follow the fortunes of the parent ; not unlikely that 
God would choose to have it so. We do not know, 
indeed, that, without special divine interposition, it 
could be otherwise. It is the universal law of nature 
that like shall produce like. As the tree, so the fruit. 
It is the great law of nature, moreover, that the 
innocent suffer with the guilty — that, in many things, 
the consequences of transgression reach beyond the 
immediate actor, and fall with crushing weight on 
those who are not personally responsible for the 
deed. It would be quite in keeping with both these 
great laws, were the vitiated and corrupt nature of 
fallen Adam to become the nature also of his whole 
posterity. 

With this view both the teaching of Scripture and 
the facts of the world's history correspond. In the 
narrative of the fall we have the only authentic account 
of the first entrance of sin into our world. It is an 
undeniable fact that human depravity has existed ever 
since that first sin of the first man, and that, without 
exception, all his descendants partake of that moral 
nature which belonged to him after that event. These 
facts indicate a close connection of the two things. 
Such a connection is evidently implied in the Scrip- 
tures, and in some passages directly affirmed. We are 
told that by one man sin came into the world, and 
death by sin, and that the consequence was universal 
sinfulness and universal death. 1 In succeeding verses 
of the same chapter the idea is resumed and repeated. 
It was by the disobedience of the one that the many 
became sinners, even as it is by the obedience of one 

i Rom. v. 12. 



436 



STUDIES IN THEOLOGY. 



that many are justified. 1 In these passages the sinful- 
ness of the race is plainly ascribed to the apostacy of 
Adam, as the occasion and origin of the same — the 
fountain whence that sad and terrible consequence has 
flowed, and is still flowing, through the long, dark 
ages of the world's history. 

This has been, accordingly, the view generally re- 
ceived in the Christian church from the first. In this 
the great body of those who adopt the Christian system 
agree, both old and new school, Calvinist and Arminian. 
As to the nature of the connection, they differ; as to 
the fact of a connection, they agree. 

To the different views respecting the nature of this 
connection, — the manner in which the depravity of 
the race links itself with, and proceeds from, the sin of 
the first parent, — let us now turn our attention. As 
already stated, the subordinate theories are these: 

a. That of the generic unity of the race, as virtually 
one with Adam — existing in him, sinning in him — 
his sin their sin. This is probably the earliest theory 
on this subject. It regards the act of Adam as the act 
of the race. The common nature of the race existed 
in him. He was the genus, comprising within itself 
all the species and individuals subsequently to be, as 
the first oak contained within itself all future oaks. 
The race was in him, not, indeed, in an individual 
capacity, but generically, and so sinned in him not as 
individuals, but as to the generic nature. The theory 
is closely related to the realism of Plato, and the 
Platonic and Neo-Platonic schools. It has found ad- 
herents, for the most part, among the admirers and 
disciples of that philosophy. It was thus with Augus- 

l Rom. v. 18, 19. 



THE DOCTRINE OF SIN. 



437 



tine. Accustomed to the realistic mode of thought, 
trained to regard abstractions as realities and to merge 
the individual in the genus, his theology on this point 
was simply the natural outgrowth of his philosophy. 
Misled, doubtless, he may have been, in part, by the 
Vulgate version of Rom. v. 12, " in quo omnes pecca- 
verunt," as he, in turn, misled others (e.g. the synod of 
Carthage) by his exposition of that passage ; but such 
a mind as his could hardly have been thus misled by 
any single verse or version, however faulty, had not a 
false philosophy, and a wrong habit of thought thus 
induced, prepared him to be easily thus misled. It is 
not so much the Vulgate version, as the Platonic 
realism, that speaks through Augustine in such utter- 
ances as these : " All men sinned in him, inasmuch as 
all were ille unus." "Those who were afterwards to 
be many out of him, were then one in him." " All 
were in that individual, and all those were he, none of 
whom as yet existed individually." " In which one all 
have sinned in common, previously to personal sins of 
each one as an individual." 1 

The theory under consideration may be regarded as 
properly that of Augustine, to whom it is indebted for 
its leading features, if not strictly for its origin. It 
soon became the prevalent theory of the Latin Fathers, 
more especially of the African church. The theologians 
of the Middle Ages found it quite accordant with their 
speculative views. The Reformers in many instances 
adopted it. In the twelfth century, Odo, Bishop 'of 
Cambray, gives it clear and precise statement. 44 My 

1 See for the above and similar passages, de Pec. Mer. i. 10; Op. Imp. 
iv. 104; Ep. 194, c. 6; de Civ. Dei, xiii. See also Miinscher von Colin, and 
Wigger's (Emerson's Tr.), for similar statements. 



438 



STUDIES IN THEOLOGY. 



mind was in him [Adam], not as a person, but as a 
component part of the species ; not in my individual 
nature, but in the common nature. For the common 
nature of every human mind was guilty of sin in Adam. 
Therefore every human mind was guilty of sin in 
Adam. Therefore every human mind is blameworthy 
in respect to its nature, but not in respect to its person. 
Therefore the sin by which we sinned in Adam is to 
ine a sin of my nature ; in Adam it was a personal sin. 
I sinned in him, not as 7, but as this substance which I 
am. I sinned as man, not as Oo?o," that is, as genus, 
not as individual. 1 Among the moderns we find Owen, 
a realist and Platonist, holding the same view. It is 
maintained by Dr. Baird, in his " Elohim revealed." 

In a modified form, this view is held also by Presi- 
dent Edwards. The race is one with Adam, according 
to his view, not, indeed, as the genus is comprehensive 
of the species, and of the individuals which it contains 
under it, but rather by an absolute, divinely-constituted 
unity, by virtue of which his sin is as truly theirs as 
the sin of a man to-day is his also to-morrow. It rests 
on the principle that God can make anything to be one 
and identical with anything else that he chooses. In 
common with the Augustinian theory, this maintains 
the essential unity of the race with Adam, so that his 
sin is really and truly, not by construction or imputa- 
tion merely, the sin of all his posterity. All men are 
truly and properly guilty of his sin, and for it deserve 
eternal death. 

With respect to the merits of this theory, it is 
scarcely necessary to remark thai: it is based on a false 
philosophy. The race is not one with Adam in such a 
i See Odo on Original Sin, Bib. Vet. Pat., Vol. xxi. 



THE DOCTRINE OF SIN. 439 

sense as that here intended. His act is not, and 
cannot be, literally the act of the race. Whether we 
define sin as properly an act, or as both an act and 
also a state, in either case it is the act or the state of a 
personal moral being. None other can sin. It was as 
a personal moral being that Adam sinned. We, his 
descendants, were not then in existence as personal 
beings, and of course could not have sinned in his 
transgression, nor have shared the guilt of it. If it be 
said human nature was summed up in him, we reply, 
a nature may be vitiated, as no doubt human nature 
was in him, its origin and fountain ; but a nature does 
not sin, for it is not a personal being. To say that the 
race, as such, sinned in its progenitor, is simply to 
personify an abstraction. Abstractions do not sin. 

Nor is it better to resolve the thing, with Edwards, 
into an arbitrary act of divine power. It is not within 
the province of Omnipotence to make things which are 
really distinct identical with eacli other. God cannot 
make the act of Caesar, or Ghengis Khan, to be, truly 
and properly, my act. He may impute it to me, treat 
me as if it were mine, punish me for it ; but that does 
not make it mine. Nay, if I commit the very same 
sin, in other words, do the same thing, it will still be 
true that the act of Caesar is his, and my. act is 
mine ; and no power in the universe can make them 
identical. 

Further than this, we are disposed to ask why that 
one act of Adam, that is, the first sin, should be ours 
also, more than any other and all other subsequent 
acts and sins of the same individual ? If the race was 
in him, generically and seminally, in his first trans- 
gression, it was so in his second and his third. All 



440 



STUDIES IN THEOLOGY. 



his acts are our acts, as really as the first transgression, 
at least until the race begins to diverge into its separate 
individual life. Even then, for aught we see, the same 
law holds in the direct line of descent. The race lies 
as really summed up in Seth, and Enos, as it did in 
Adam. Are their sins also ours? Why not, on this 
theory ? Did we not exist generically in Seth, and 
afterward in Noah ? In fact, are not all the sins of all 
our progenitors in danger of coming down upon our 
heads, on this theory, unless we stand from under it ? 
And, still further, why are not all our posterity sinning 
in us, on the same principle. 

From some passages in his writings, it would seem 
that these logical consequences of his theory did not 
escape the mind of Augustine, and that he was not 
disposed to shrink from them. He thinks it not im- 
probable " that children are liable for the sins, not only 
of the first pair, but also of those from whom they are 
born," and that the sins of ancestors universally are 
the heritage of their descendants. " But respecting 
the sins of the other parents," he says, " the progenitors 
from Adam down to one's own immediate father, it 
may not improperly be debated whether the child is 
implicated in the evil acts and multiplied original faults 
of all, so that each one is the worse in proportion as he 
is the later ; or that in respect to the sins of their par- 
ents, God threatens posterity to the third and fourth 
generation, because, by the moderation of his. compas- 
sion, he does not further extend his anger in respect to 
the faults of progenitors, lest those on whom the grace 
of regeneration is not conferred should be pressed with 
too heavy a load in their own eternal damnation, if 
they were compelled to contract by way of origin the 



THE DOCTRINE OF SIN. 



441 



sins of all their preceding parents from the commence- 
ment of the human race, and to suffer the punishment 
due for them." 1 

b. Passing from this, we have next the theory of the 
constructive unity of the race with Adam, as its federal 
head and representative, by virtue of a special covenant 
made with him to that effect. The sin of Adam is not 
really and properly that of the race, but only by con- 
struction. He acts for the whole, by special divine 
arrangement. It is as if they were there and sinned, 
each in person. Such, it is maintained, is the relation 
of the race to the first parent as to justify such an 
arrangement and constitute the ground of it. In him 
the race stands its probation. He represents them in 
the whole transaction. In him they are tried, in him 
they sin, with him they fall. Forensically his sin is 
their sin. To them it is reckoned or imputed, as if it 
were theirs. 

The two theories, a and 6, differ in this. According 
to a, the sin of Adam is really and properly the sin of 
the race, and is therefore imputed to all his descendants. 
According to 6, it is imputed to them, and therefore it 
is theirs. In the one case, it is mine because imputed ; 
in the other, it is imputed because it is already mine. 

The view now presented is that advocated in the 
Princeton Repertory, and in the Southern Presbyterian 
Review. It is, we suppose, the received doctrine of the 
Old School Presbyterian church. Among the Christian 
Fathers we find no distinct traces of this doctrine. It 
would seem to have originated with the schoolmen, 
and to have made little progress until after the six- 

1 Euchir., c. 46, 47, as cited by Emerson in Wigger's Augustinism. See 
also comments of the translator on the above passage. 



442 



STUDIES IN THEOLOGY. 



teentb century. It became the favorite theory of the 
German Reformed theologians of the seventeenth and 
eighteenth centuries, and was favored by some of the 
Lutherans of the same period. 1 

To this view, it occurs as a serious, if not fatal, 
objection, that if the relation of the race to Adam is 
not such as to make us really and justly chargeable 
with his sin, then it is not such as to be a just ground 
for treating us as if we were chargeable with it. If 
his sin is not, as the former theory affirms, and as this 
denies, really and truly ours, then it is certainly not 
right and just to charge it to us, and to deal with us 
as if it were ours. It is a manifest injustice to impute 
to any man what does not really belong to him in the 
way of evil, and then to treat him as if he were what 
the charge implies ; and no covenant, real or imaginary, 
can make it otherwise. The covenant that does this is 
unjust. It would be a manifest wrong to hold any 
living man responsible for the sin of Cain, of Noah, or 
of David. But if the sin of Adam may be imputed to 
us, without personal participation of our own, why not 
the sins of any other ancestor or predecessor ? If we 
did not share in the transgression, how can we share 
in the guilt ? Or, if made to share the guilt in the 
one case, why not also in the others ? We do not see 
anything in the mere fact that Adam stands at the 
head of the race, stands first in the line, that can 
essentially change the relation of the parties, or make 
it right for us to be charged w T ith his sins, more than 
if he stood second, tenth, or fiftieth in the line of pro- 

1 Among the former may be mentioned Witsius; among the latter, 
Pfaff of Tubingen, some of the disciples of Wolf, Baumgarten, and 
others. 



THE DOCTRINE OF SIN". 



443 



genitorsliip. The relation itself constitutes no ground 
for such transfer of guilt, in the one case more than 
in the other, nor in either case ; and if such transfer 
of blame and responsibility be made, it must be by 
virtue of an arrangement purely arbitrary, and which 
in any other case men would not hesitate to pronounce 
unreasonable and unjust. 

This injustice the previous theory escapes, by sup- 
posing the race, as such, actually to have sinned in 
Adam, and so justly to be chargeable with the guilt of 
his transgression. The present theory admits that we 
did not really participate in his sin, and yet charges 
upon us the guilt of the transaction, as if we had been 
a party to the offence. Is this just? 

It does not relieve the difficulty to be told, as in the 
Princeton Repertory, that imputation does not imply 
transfer of moral character, but only exposure, to punish- 
ment ; that the race did not really participate in the sin 
of Adam, nor in the moral ill-desert of that transgression, 
but only that his sin is laid to our charge, and we are 
punished for it. Charged with, and punished for, what 
we are really wholly innocent of! No ti'ansfer of the 
sin itself, none of the moral character, or blame-worthi- 
ness which attaches to all acts of transgression, since 
these pertain only to the transgressor himself, and 
cannot be transferred, but, in place of these, a transfer 
of the charge and of the punishment. 1 But does not; 
the punishment belong to the transgressor, and to him 
only, as really as the sin ? Is it a relief to any man's 
sense of injustice and wrong to tell him, u We do not 
really tiring that you committed that offence, nor do 
we blame you in the least for any share of yours in the 

. 1 See Article on Imputation, in Princeton Essays, series first, Essay vi, 



444 



STUDIES IX THEOLOGY. 



transaction, for we know that you had none ; we only 
charge yon with it, and 'punish you for it ! " 

But we shall be told that God is a Sovereign, and 
has a right to make what arrangement he pleases — a 
right to stake the destinies of the race on the issue of 
Adam's probation, and if he falls, to deal with the race 
as if they had individually fallen — a right to impute 
his sin to them as if it were theirs, and deal with them 
accordingly. We reply, God is, indeed, a Sovereign ; 
but that gives him no right to act unjustly — no right 
to punish one man for the sins of another, nor to im- 
pute to one man the acts of another. We are not to 
take refuge behind the throne of divine sovereignty 
with theories that will not bear the test of calm investi- 
gation, and that shock the common feelings of justice 
and propriety which nature has implanted in the human 
bosom. This doctrine belongs not there. Away with 
it, and the like of it, from that place. 

Shall we, then, with others, justify the imputation of 
Adam's sin to the race on the supposition that God 
presumed that all his descendants would sin if placed 
each on trial as Adam was, and so, by an act of gen- 
eralization, dealt with all as with him, on the principle 
ex uno disce omnes. This is the scientia media of the 
schoolmen. But this is a supposition wholly without 
proof; it is, moreover, a wholly unreasonable and arbi- 
trary mode of procedure which is thus supposed. On 
the same principle, why not send the race at once to 
perdition, or to paradise, without individual probation, 
since to the divine mind it is evident from eternity that 
some will, and others will not, accept the offer of salvation 
through a Redeemer, if the question be submitted to them. 

Jt may be replied that no objection from the apparent 



THE DOCTRINE OF SIN. 



445 



injustice of the procedure can set aside the plain fact, 
as revealed in Scripture, that God does impute the sin 
of Adam to all his posterity. True, we reply, if it he 
a fact. But is it ? Does the Scripture teach this doc- 
trine ? If so, we have nothing more to say, but bow in 
silence to a dispensation which, upon any principles of 
human reason, we can neither justify nor explain. 

But we look in vain for any such teaching. The 
word " impute," we do, indeed, find in the Scriptures, 
but not in the sense here intended, that of transferring 
or setting to the account of another guilt not really 
and properly his own. Not an instance of this can be 
found. Abraham believes God, and it is imputed to 
him for righteousness. What is imputed ? His faith. 
Whose faith ? His own. Shimei prays David not to 
impute to him his guilt in cursing the king. Whose 
guilt? His own. On the contrary, do not the Scrip- 
tures expressly deny any such transfer of guilt from 
one to another ? Do they not, in the strongest and 
most explicit terms, declare that in the divine adminis- 
tration there is, and can be, no such principle of pro- 
cedure ? That " the son shall not bear the iniquity of 
the father, neither shall the father bear the iniquity of 
the son ; the righteousness of the righteous shall be 
upon him, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be 
upon him." 1 The soul that sins, it, and it only, shall 
bear the punishment of its sins. 

But does not God visit the iniquity of the fathers 
upon the children, to the third and fourth generation ? 2 
True, we reply, the children of ungodly parents suffer 
many evils in consequence of the sins of their ancestry. 

1 Ezektel xvjii. 20, Compare Deut. xxiv. 16; see also 2 Kings xiv. 6. 

2 Deut. y. 9 ; Numb. iv. 18, 



STUDIES IN THEOLOGY. 



It is a principle universally true — a grand law, it 
would seem, of the moral universe — that sin involves 
the innocent along with the guilty in suffering and 
calamity. But there is a difference between suffering 
and punishment. To suffer in consequence of the sin 
of another is not to be punished for the sin of another. 
If so, then we are punished for the sins of our imme- 
diate ancestors no less than for the sin of Adam ; nay, 
for theirs much more directly than for his ; future 
generations, in like manner, will be punished for ours. 

Should it be replied, that this is really all that is 
intended by the doctrine of imputation, — that the 
consequences of Adam's sin pass over to his descendants 
in the shape of manifold suffering and evil, by whatever 
name we choose to call those consequences, whether 
calamity or punishment,- — we have simply to say, that, 
if this be all that is intended, then in no proper sense 
is it sin that is imputed, nor the guilt of sin, nor its 
punishment ; and it is a mere perversion and abuse of 
language to call it so. 

We have dwelt thus far upon a single objection to 
the theory under consideration, the injustice of treating 
men as if they were guilty of a sin with which they are 
not in reality chargeable. It is furthermore to be ob- 
jected to this view of the nature of our connection with 
the sin of Adam, that it rests upon an assumption 
which is at once questionable and objectionable. That 
assumption is, that Adam acted, and was, by special 
covenant on the part of God, entitled to act, as our 
federal head and representative in this whole proceeding. 

This is the groundwork of the theory. The proba- 
tion of the race, the grand problem of its destiny, was 
submitted to his decision. He acted for us on trial, 



THE DOCTRINE OF SIN. 



447 



sinned for us, fell for us, and his sin becomes thus, in 
point of law, though not in point of fact, our sin. He 
was, in other words, agent for the race in the matter 
of probation. But this is an assumption which we are 
not prepared to concede. Upon what evidence does it 
rest ? The advocates of this view speak of a covenant 
made with Adam to this effect, constituting him our 
federal head and representative. What, we ask, is that 
covenant, and where is it ? What are its terms ? 
Who are the parties to it ? Where was it made ? 
What evidence that any such covenant was ever made 
by God or man ? These are perfectly fair and legiti- 
mate questions. We have the right to ask them, and 
to demand an answer. 

Besides, with what propriety could Adam act for us 
in the manner now supposed ?• A federal representa- 
tive is usually supposed to derive his authority from 
the consent and choice of those whom he represents. 
But it is a singular and most remarkable feature of 
this compact, that those most directly interested in it, 
and who are to be represented in the case, who are to 
be put on trial and acquitted or condemned in the 
person of their representative, whose eternal destiny 
depends on the issue of that momentous trial, are not, 
in fact, parties to the transaction in any sense whatever, 
not being then in existence. What sort of a compact 
or federal agreement is that in which the parties chiefly 
interested have no share ? And where is the justice 
and propriety of such a compact and such a representa- 
tion ? Is it not a gross abuse of terms to speak of 
Adam as our federal representative, in the sense now 
intended ? 

There is a sense, and that a very important one, we 



448 



STUDIES IN THEOLOGY. 



are ready to admit, in which men do act for those who 
come after them. Every man acts for others, no less 
than for himself, in whatever lie does. The conse- 
quences of his acts extend to others, and affect them 
seriously, it may be permanently. Nor can it be 
otherwise. When the Puritan colony set sail from 
Delfthaven for the shores of the new world, they were 
acting, not for themselves alone, but for us — for com- 
ing generations. When our fathers threw off the yoke 
of subjection to Great Britain, they acted for those who 
were to come after them. Thus are we acting in the 
great struggle of the present hour. In future years, 
when we are gone and forgotten, those who are to bear 
our name, and inherit our virtues, or our vices, will reap 
the reward of our present sacrifices and sufferings for 
the land that we love. So universally ; the child of 
the convicted felon inherits the disgrace of a dishonored 
name ; the drunkard and the profligate bequeath to 
their children a vitiated sensibility and a disordered 
constitution. In this sense, we are all the representa- 
tives of those who are to be affected by the results of 
our action. In this sense, Adam may be said to have 
represented the whole race, at the head of which he 
stood. Xo man ever brought snch fearful consequences 
on such a multitude who came after him, such a train 
of woes and evils on all coming time. In this sense 
did he act for the race ; in this, and in no other. 

As respects this theory, then, while we admit and 
maintain that many evils resulting from the sin of 
Adam pass over to his posterity, not the least of which 
evils is a corrupt and vitiated moral nature, we cannot 
admit that in any proper sense his sin is transferred to 
us, or charged to us as if it were ours ; while we admit 



THE DOCTRINE OF SIN. 



449 



that in some sense he acted for us, just as all men act 
for those who come after them, we cannot admit that 
he was in the proper and legal sense our representative, 
or that he acted for us in such a sense that his sin 
becomes by construction our sin, and that we are held 
in law responsible, and exposed to punishment, for the 
same. 

Rejecting, then, both the views already presented, 
under a and 6, as to the nature of the connection be- 
tween the depravity of the race and the sin of the first 
parent, we have 

c. The view which represents that depravity as re- 
sulting simply from the laws of natural descent ; the 
child inheriting from the parent a vitiated and corrupt 
nature, prone to evil, in consequence of which he comes 
to sin as soon as he comes to moral agency. This 
nature, derived from Adam through successive genera- 
tions, is the consequence of his original apostasy. His 
own nature, which became corrupt by the fall, is trans- 
mitted to his posterity, just as like always begets its 
like. According to this view, we are not constituted 
sinners by the mere act of Adam sinning, nor by the 
imputation of his sin to us, nor by any agency of our 
own, real or imaginary, in that transaction, nor by any 
compact or covenant made with him in regard to us ; 
but only by our own moral act. We are not consti- 
tuted sinners until we become sinners, that is, until we 
sin. Sin we do, however, and that uniformly, because 
of the corrupt nature thus inherited. That which is 
born of the flesh is flesh. Adam fallen begets a son in 
his own likeness, and so through successive generations 
the evil nature extends. 

This is the view now generally entertained, we be- 
20 



450 



STUDIES m THEOLOGY. 



lieve, by the New England theologians. It would seem 
to be the scriptural idea of native depravity, as it 
certainly is the most reasonable, the most simple and 
natural idea of it that we can form. The theory is 
simply this : Like father, like son. As to most things 
we know that this is true. Why may it not be so as to 
moral nature ? If a fondness for particular pursuits 
and professions, an ear and a taste for music, a propen- 
sity to mathematical studies or mechanical employments 
are, as we know they are, inherited ; if the predomi- 
nance of certain passions and appetites is to be traced to 
the same source, — if these things and the like descend 
from parent to child, why may it not be so with that 
peculiarity of the moral nature which we find to be 
universal in man, the propensity to evil ? Why may 
not the moral follow the same general law which holds 
of the mental and the physical nature ? Is not this 
precisely what we might expect and predict, from the 
simple observation of the laws of nature in regard to 
such matters ? 

II. Our second question now arises: Is this depravity 
of our nature in itself culjiable? We have thus far 
directed our inquiries to the origin of the corruption 
which we observe in human nature. But what of its 
morality ? Is this innate propensity to evil in itself 
blameworthy — in itself sin ? Our question has refer- 
ence, be it remembered, to the native disposition, not 
to human depravity in general, as manifested in the 
conduct of life ; not to voluntary acts or voluntary 
states of mind, but to that vitiosity of nature itself with 
which we come into being, and which precedes and 
lies back of all voluntary acts and states. Is that 
culpable ? 



THE DOCTRINE OF SIN. 



551 



The answer, of course, will depend very much on 
the reply we make to the preceding question. If we 
brought this corruption of nature on ourselves, by our 
own voluntary acts in some previous state of being, 
then it may be culpable. If we brought it on ourselves 
by personal participation in Adam's transgression, then 
it is not only vitium, but culpa ; it may justly be 
blamed, and justly be punished. If it comes to us by 
constructive participation in his sin, then, by the. same 
construction, we may be implicated in the guilt and in 
the punishment of chat transgression and of its conse- 
quences, of which this is one. On the other hand, if the 
propensity in question be something which we have in 
no way, whether directly or indirectly, by personal act 
or by construction, brought upon ourselves ; if it be, for 
instance, the creation of Deity in the original constitu- 
tion of our nature, or if it be the natural result of the 
sins of our ancestors before we were born, in either 
case, the matter being wholly out of our control, lies 
also beyond the. lines of our responsibility. Our ca- 
lamity, our misfortune, it may be, but not our guilt. 
Blame attaches, and can justly attach, only where 
there is moral agency ; and moral agency involves the 
choices and affections, the voluntary acts and states of 
mind, of an intelligent rational being. But the nature 
with which a man comes into the world precedes all 
such agency on his part. It is no choice nor act of 
his, nor the result of any such act or choice. On the 
contrary, in the present case it is the result of some- 
thing which occurred before he had any being — cen- 
turies before he or his immediate ancestry existed. 
We do not blame a man in other cases for the nature 
with which he was born. Why should we in this ? It 



452 



STUDIES IN THEOLOGY. 



may be disagreeable to us — the color of the hair, the 
color of the eyes, the general cast of complexion and 
features, the dwarfed or distorted form — extremely 
disagreeable ; but we find no fault with the man on 
account of these peculiarities. He was so born. It is 
his misfortune, but not his fault. But is not the same 
true of the moral as well as of the physical condition 
and tendencies, in so far as they are strictly native ? 
How can blame attach where there is no responsibility, 
or .responsibility wiiere there is no agency in bringing 
about the result ? In respect to the physical traits 
that are strictly native, this is universally conceded. 
Wherein does the case really differ as respects the 
moral traits and tendencies that are also native ? 
Wherein am I really any more responsible for a native 
tendency to good or evil, than for a native tendency to 
mathematical or musical studies, or for the particular 
color of the eyes or of the hair ? Had I any more 
agency in producing the one than the other of these 
peculiarities ? And how can I be held responsible for 
that which I had no agency in producing, and which 
it is wholly out of my power to prevent ? A defect it 
may be, and that a very serious one ; but am I to 
blame for that defect ? 

But, reply the Princeton divines, sin is sin, however 
it originates. If a man is good, he is good ; if bad, he 
is bad, no matter how he became so. But it seems to 
us that it does matter how he became so, and that very 
materially. Otherwise, suppose that Deity himself, 
according to the supposition first made, did by direct 
creative act endow man with a disposition to evil ; and 
suppose him then to charge that disposition to man as 
his own fault, and to punish him for having it. Does 



THE DOCTRINE OE SIX. 



453 



it make no difference now how the man comes by that 
disposition? Would he not say: "It is hard, and 
seems unjust, to be punished simply for being what 
you made me " ? Would it be sufficient and satis- 
factory for Deity to reply: " True, it seems hard; but 
then sin is sin, good is good, and evil is evil, wherever 
found, no matter how they originated ! I must deal 
with facts as they are, without inquiring how they 
came to be so." 

Suppose, by some statute, human or divine, all men 
were required to have black hair and blue eyes, and 
that by some misfortune it happened to one of the 
aforesaid divines to be otherwise provided. The fact is 
patent, and the logic is irresistible ; he is a violator of 
the statute, and must pay the penalty. " But it is not 
my fault," replies the culprit ; I was so born ; I had 
no agency or choice in the matter." " True," replies 
the judge, " but I have read in your own writings that 
good is good, and bad is bad, no matter how they came 
to be so ; and surely it is true that red hair is red hair, 
whatever its origin. Is it not a tenet of your own 
philosophy, that even the native dispositions and ten- 
dencies are culpable ? " To which, of course, the 
theologian can only reply : " Yerily, it is so." 

The question to be considered is not whether sin is 
sin, wherever found, nor yet whether all sin is blame- 
worthy and to be punished, but whether the native 
tendency to evil in man is sin. To this the common 
sense of mankind, when fairly questioned and allowed 
to give true answer, makes but one reply. It recog- 
nizes nothing as truly and properly culpable which it 
is not in the power of man to avoid. It attaches blame 
only where there is responsibility, and responsibility 



454 



STUDIES IN THEOLOGY. 



only where there is some agency in bringing about the 
result. If a man bring upon himself by his own 
vicious conduct a tendency to insanity or disease, men 
say he is responsible for that result. If he transmits 
that tendency to his children, they lay the blame of the 
disordered constitution which those children inherit, 
not upon the children themselves, but upon the parent 
who contracted and transmitted the evil. If a man, by 
carelessness or design, put out his own eyes, men say 
he is to blame, and must suffer the consequences of his 
own carelessness and folly. If he is born blind, he is 
never charged with it as any fault of his own. 

But, it may be asked, is not a tendency to sin a 
sinful tendency ? Sinful, we reply, in one sense, but 
not in the sense intended in the question — sinful in 
the sense of leading to sin, not in the sense of being 
itself sin. The expression is ambiguous. But is not a 
disposition or tendency to sin itself sin ? How can it 
be so ? we reply. Is a constitutional tendency to 
blindness or insanity, itself blindness or insanity ? Is a 
predisposition to decay and death, itself decay and 
death ? Is the tendency of a chimney to smoke, itself 
smoke ? Yet we call the chimney smoky, and so we 
call the disposition sinful ; meaning, in either case, 
that the tendency is in that direction. 

But it amounts to the same thing in the end, it may 
be said, whether men come into the world already 
sinful, or with a disposition that is sure to lead to sin ; 
in either case sin is the result. It makes just this 
difference, we reply : In the one case the man is a 
sinner by no agency and through no fault of his own ; 
in the other case, he is a sinner from choice and by his 
own act. It is precisely the difference between a 



THE DOCTRINE OF SIN. 



455 



responsible agent, and an irresponsible, passive recipi- 
ent; between a voluntary doer, and an involuntary 
sufferer. As regards the responsibility of man, it is the 
difference between something and nothing ; as regards 
the justice of the divine character, it is the difference 
between noon and midnight. 

The view which we are maintaining would seem to 
be the most simple and obvious one — that which 
would commend itself to the reason and good sense of 
men. It is not, however, it must frankly be confessed, 
the view which has most widely prevailed among theo- 
logians. It was held by Zuingli among the Reformers, 
and by Jeremy Taylor in the English church. It is 
the doctrine of the New Haven divines, and, indeed, of 
the New England theologians generally, at the present 
day, as well as of the New School portion of the Pres- 
byterian church. The older and stricter Calvinists 
have uniformly maintained the opposite. Calvin him- 
self holds that our corrupt nature is sin, because the 
seed of sin, and therefore odious to God and sinful in 
his sight ; and that infants may justly be punished for 
it, irrespective of actual transgression. 1 

The Helvetic and French confessions make our cor- 
rupt nature to be hereditary sin ; and the latter even 
goes so far as to pronounce it deserving of eternal 
death in infants yet unborn. The Augsburg Confes- 
sion takes essentially the same view, regarding* native 
corruption as inherent sin. Such is the view of the 
Lutheran and Reformed churches in their various 
branches. The Thirty-nine Articles of the church of 
England make original sin the fault of the nature 
of every man by descent from Adam, and deserving 
1 See Institutes, ii. 1, 8; also Commentary on Rom. v. 12. 



456 



STUDIES IN THEOLOGY. 



damnation as such. The Princeton divines, and the 
Old School theologians generally, of this country, regard 
our native corruption as itself sin. This inherent sin 
they hold to be the penalty for our sin in Adam, as 
our federal head and representative. Sin is thus made 
the punishment of sin. We are, in the first place, 
charged with a sin which we never committed, and for 
that sin we are punished by inheriting a depraved 
nature. But further, that depravity is itself a sin 
deserving eternal punishment. So that we are to be 
punished for being punished ! Our sin is punishment, 
and our punishment is a further sin ! 

If we inquire for the opinions of the Greek and Latin 
Fathers on this subject, we find no traces of the doc- 
trine that our native depravity is itself sin, previous to 
the time of Augustine. He was the very first to apply 
to this native bias or propensity to sin the terms pec- 
catum originale. Previously Tertullian had been care- 
ful to designate it, not as peccatum, but as vitium and 
malum. " Malum animae ex originis vitio, 1 he denom- 
inates it in one passage ; and Ambrose calls it con- 
tagium : " Antequam nascimur, maculamur contagio? 
The term peccatum, indeed, admits of this sense as well 
as of the other ; it may be either malum or culpa ; but 
as employed by Augustine it is taken in the stricter 
sense. After him it gradually found its way into the 
language of councils and of the Western church, not, 

1 De Anima, c 41. 

2 Apol. David, c. 11 ; so also Cyprian, who in one place speaks of an in- 
fant as having committed no sin at all, but only inherited a depraved dis- 
position from Adam — " contracted contagion." Tertullian expressly calls 
children whose depraved disposition is not yet developed in action " inno- 
cent " ; and Clement of Alexandria says : " David, though begotten in sin, 
was not himself in sin, nor was himself sin." 



THE DOCTRINE OF SIN. 



457 



however, without frequent dissent and protest. The 
distinction which in the fifth century began to be made 
between peccatum originate, and peccata actualia, in- 
dicates a disposition to discriminate more clearly than 
Augustine had done in his use of the term. Later 
still, the schoolmen, accustomed to greater precision in 
the use of terms, preferred the more accurate expres- 
sion of Tertullian, vitium naturals. 

The position of Dr. Woods, late of Andover, in 
respect to this matter, is somewhat anomalous. In 
common with the theologians of the earlier school, he 
holds that there is in man " a wrong disposition or a 
corrupt nature, which is antecedent to any sinful emo- 
tions, and from which, as an inward source, all sinful 
emotions and actions proceed," 1 and that this disposi- 
tion or nature is itself morally wrong and sinful. This 
he labors at considerable length to show. He goes 
further, and raises the question, "whether it may not 
be, partly at least, on account of this degenerate nature 
of Adam's posterity, that God speaks of them, and in 
his government treats them, a,s sinners, from the very 
beginning of their personal existence, and previously 
to any actual transgression." 2 This opinion he speaks 
of as one which has generally been maintained by 
evangelical writers, particularly Dr. Dwight, in his 
System of Theology, and thinks it may be the true 
opinion. " In our very nature, in the state of our 
minds from the beginning of our existence, God may 
see a moral contamination, a corrupt propensity, which, 
connected as it is with the first offence of Adam, ren- 
ders it in his infallible judgment just and right for him 
to treat us as sinners. May it not be," he asks, " that 

i Works, Vol. ii. p. 328. 2 ibid, ii. p. 326. 



458 



STUDIES IN THEOLOGY. 



infants suffer and die on tins account, as well as on 
account of the one offence of Adam?" Yet lie sub- 
sequently advances the opinion as one which substan- 
tially unites the two conflicting theories, and which 
will, he thinks, be most likely in the end to be gene- 
rally adopted that, the disposition, whatever it may be, 
is never really regarded and treated as exclusive of 
action : " What I mean is that there is no such thing 
as a moral being who is actually treated as a subject 
of retribution, while his moral nature is not in some 
way developed in holy or unholy action." 1 u While 
any one exists, and continues to exist, with a disposi- 
tion or propensity which has not in any way been 
manifested by action, how can he be treated as a sub- 
ject of retribution ? Though his disposition is wrong 
(wrong as a disposition), he must ultimately be treated 
according to his actions, they being the true expression 
of his disposition." 2 

So we should say. But what then becomes of the 
proposition that, because of this disposition, prior to all 
acts of transgression, God may treat infants as sinners, 
and they suffer and die on this account ? The two 
positions are manifestly and utterly at variance. 

Dr.- Woods strongly disclaims the idea that infants 
will be condemned to future misery merely because of 
native depravity. " I am not aware that any intelligent 
Christian can be found," he says, " who maintains the 
unauthorized and appalling position that infant chil- 
dren, who are not guilty of any actual sin, either out- 
wardly or inwardly, will be doomed to misery in the 
world to come." 3 But why not, if the native disposition 
is itself sin, morally wrong per se, "the essence of 

i Works, Vol. ii. p. 340. 2 ibid, ii. p. 342. 3 ibid, ii. p. HI. 



THE DOCTRINE OF SIN. 



459 



moral evil," " the sum of all that is vile and hateful," 
— why may it not be punished, and that justly ? More- 
over, if infants actually do suffer and die, as sinners, 
because of this nature merely, though not as yet de- 
veloped in moral action — if their sufferings and death 
are the actual punishment of that inherent sin, as the 
earlier writers maintain, and as Dr. Woods thinks may 
be the case, how do we know that they may not be 
punished also hereafter for the same offence ? If their 
native disposition is such a sin as justly to bring 
upon them the greatest suffering and penalty in this 
world, may it not possibly reach over to the future, 
and involve them in like judgments there ? An " ap- 
palling position " it may well be called ; but not more 
appalling than the premise of which it is the logical 
consequence, that an inherent disposition or tendency 
to sin, though not as yet developed in action, is itself 
sin. If so, then it may be justly treated as such. 
Calvin was logically consistent in holding the doctrine, 
and accepting the conclusion ; Dr. Woods, logically 
inconsistent in accepting the doctrine, and rejecting the 
conclusion. 

Nor is Dr. Woods more fortunate in his facts, than in 
his logic. He does not seem to be aware that any one 
holds, or has ever held, this appalling doctrine. In the 
passage last cited, he thinks no " intelligent Christian 
can be found who maintains " the future misery of 
infants who have not- committed actual sin. And in 
his earlier letters to Unitarians, he holds the following 
language : "On this particular point our opinions have 
been often misrepresented. We are said to hold that 
God dooms a whole race of innocent creatures to 
destruction, or considers them all deserving of destruc- 



460 



STUDIES IN THEOLOGY. 



tion, for the sin of one man. Now, when I examine 
the writings of the earlier Calvinists generally on the 
subject of original sin, I find nothing which resembles 
such a statement as this." 1 Exceptionable language, 
he admits, may have been used in some cases, and 
erroneous opinions have sometimes been entertained, 
" but the Orthodox in New England at the present 
day," he thinks, u are not chargeable with the same 
fault." Probably not ; for they are not chargeable 
with opinions which would naturally and logically lead 
to such a conclusion. They do not believe that a 
native tendency not yet developed in action is itself 
sin, and therefore deserves to be treated as such. They 
do not hold that the sin of Adam is, by imputation or 
otherwise, in any proper sense, the sin of his posterity, 
so that they may justly be punished for it. But what 
shall we say of the creeds and confessions already re- 
ferred to, which do teach at once these doctrines and 
their logical consequence ? What of Calvin himself, 
as already cited, to the effect that infants may justly be 
punished for the depravity of nature, irrespective of 
actual sin ? What of the Helvetic Confession, which 
pronounces the depraved nature to be sin, and deserving 
of damnation, even in infants yet unborn ? What of the 
Thirty-nine Articles, which make original sin the fault 
of the nature of every man by descent from Adam, and 
deserving damnation as such ? What of the Augsburg 
Confession, w T hich takes essentially the same ground, 
including imputed along with inherent sin ? What of 
Dr. Hodge and the Princeton divines, who take the 
same ground ? In fine, what shall we say of such 
distinguished writers as Abelard and Pascal, who go 

1 Letters to Unitarians, page 31, original edition. 



THE DOCTRINE OF SIN. 



461 



further than Calvin, and hold not merely that God justly 
may, but actually does, condemn to endless misery 
beings not guilty of actual transgression ? 

We have considered in the previous pages the rela- 
tion of sin to the nature of man. It remains to discuss 
its relation to the will and purpose of God. 

Account for it as we may, or account for it not at 
all, the fact remains evident and indisputable. Sin 
does exist in our world. It is here, and it is here in 
some way by divine permission. It is here, and God 
has not prevented its being here. But why not ? 
Here is the enigma. Looking at the omnipotence of 
God, we are ready to say he can prevent it if he will. 
Looking at his benevolence and holiness, we are ready 
to say he will prevent it if he can. Yet he has not 
done so. 

Various methods of explanation have been attempted 
by those who have sought to solve this enigma. Two 
suppositions, however, and only two, are logically pos- 
sible ; into one or the other of which all the suppositions 
and theories on the subject virtually resolve themselves. 
These are : 

A. That God cannot entirely prevent sin. 

B. Tliat for some reason he does not choose to pre- 
vent it. 

As each of these propositions supposes what the 
other denies, — A, that God chooses to prevent all sin, 
but cannot; B, that he can, but chooses not, — they 
are virtually contradictory of each other ; and as such, 
by the laws of contradiction and of excluded middle, 
while they cannot both be true, one or the other must be. 

Each, again, may be presented under diverse forms. 
We may say that God cannot prevent all sin, a. in any 



4G2 



STUDIES IN THEOLOGY. 



system ; b. in a moral system. Or, if we adopt the 
other theory, we may hold that God does not choose to 
prevent sin, a. because its existence is in itself desir- 
able ; or b. because, though not in itself desirable, it is 
still the necessary means of the greatest good ; or c. 
because, though not in itself tending to good, it may be 
overruled to that result ; or d. because, in general 
terms, its permission will involve less evil than its 
absolute prevention. 

Taking the first theory in its first form, we have this 
statement : 

A. God cannot prevent all sin — a. in any system. 
This is possible, supposable, but not probable. His 
omnipotence is thus essentially surrendered. If he 
cannot prevent sin in any system which can be devised, 
— if it is not in his power, in other words, to construct 
a system from which all sin shall be effectually ex- 
cluded, — then there is a manifest and essential limit 
to his power. This may be. But what evidence that 
it is so ? What reason to suppose that the entire pre- 
vention of sin is a matter wholly beyond the sphere of 
the divine power ? Might he not have given man a 
nature, for example, that would wholly have precluded 
sin? Or, endowing him with the present nature and 
mental constitution, might he not have kept temptation 
out of his way, and surrounded him with influences 
that would certainly have insured his obedience ? True, 
that would not be the present system, but it would be 
a system. Do we know that God could not have done 
this ? 

The question is not now whether such a system 
would be the best — whether it would be a wise and 
expedient method, or the reverse ; but whether it might 



THE DOCTRINE OF SIX. 



463 



not be a possible thing ; whether we know that it would 
not be possible. The theory under consideration is 
positive upon this point. The burden of proof rests 
on those who maintain such a position. In the absence 
of proof to the contrary, we have a right to infer that 
the power of God, which we find to be unlimited in 
other respects, is also unlimited in the matter of the 
prevention of sin — that he might, if he had chosen, 
have instituted a system from which moral evil should 
be wholly excluded. 

As stated in its second form, the theory is, that God 
cannot prevent all sin, b. in a moral system. Such is 
the nature, it is supposed, of moral agency, that, under 
all influences which may be brought to bear upon him, 
the free agent may still sin, and God cannot prevent it 
but by destroying his freedom. But can this be proved ? 
Doubtless, in a moral system, it must be in the power 
of the agent to sin if he chooses. But that is not the 
point. The question is not whether he can sin if lie 
pleases, but whether he certainly will sin in spite of all 
influences to the contrary. Whether it is impossible 
for God to prevent his sinning without taking away his 
freedom. Of this it seems to us there is no proof. We 
do not see that there is anything in the nature of 
moral agency, or a moral system, to forbid the supposi- 
tion that God, while leaving the power to sin complete 
in the free agent, may still secure the certainty of an 
opposite result. Is not the certainty of a given course 
of action perfectly compatible with power to the con- 
trary ? Such, at all events, is the philosophy of those 
who hold this theory. To say that man may sin, then, 
because he is a free agent, does not prove that God 
cannot prevent him from actually sinning, and still 



464 



STUDIES IN THEOLOGY. 



leave him a free agent. The power to sin, and the 
exercise of that power, are two different things, and the 
one may exist without the other — the former without 
the latter. 

What evidence, then, that God cannot prevent sin in 
a moral system ? That he has not prevented it does 
not prove that he can not. There may be other reasons 
for his not preventing it besides the want of power to 
do so. 

The supposition that God is unable to keep sin out 
of a moral system is, to say the least, an improbable 
one. He can do so many things, that it is certainly 
fair to presume, in the absence of positive evidence to 
the contrary, that he can govern moral agents. It is 
not probable that he would create a system which 
he could not control — a system which when created 
must be at once abandoned to moral ruin, or else 
destroyed. The wisdom of instituting a system, the 
working of which, in so essential a point, should be 
beyond his control, would be more than questionable. 

Nor does the supposition fully and fairly meet the 
question before us. Why does God permit sin ? we 
ask. Because he cannot prevent it in a certain hind 
of a system, namely, a moral one, is the reply. Very 
well ; then why not adopt some other ? Is he shut up 
to this alone of all possible systems ? To reply that a 
moral system with sin is better than any. other system 
without sin, is to change the ground. It is then, after 
all, not from want of power to prevent it, but simply as 
a matter of expediency, that sin is permitted. The 
debate shifts at once to the second of the two leading 
theories. 

Furthermore, if sin cannot be prevented in a moral 



THE DOCTRINE OF SIX. 



465 



system, then it cannot be prevented in any system. 
For what is sin ? Is it not something pertaining ex- 
clusively to moral beings, and so to a moral system ? 
Is sin possible except under a moral system ? If so, 
then, to say that God cannot prevent it in a moral 
system, is to say that he cannot prevent it at all. If 
lie can prevent sin, then he can prevent it under the 
only circumstances in which it can possibly occur, 
namely, in a moral system. 

And why not, we ask again — why may not sin be 
prevented in a moral system ? What is the insuperable 
obstacle ? The theory rests on some supposed inability 
on the part of God to influence the choices of free 
moral agents so as to secure given results. But of this 
there is no evidence. Nay, there is abundant evidence 
to the contrary. It is not true that God cannot influ- 
ence the choices, and so control the moral conduct of 
free agents. He can do this. He does it. He kept 
the holy angels. He keeps good men every day from 
falling. When the heart of man is renewed by divine 
grace, when the soul of the believer is purified and 
sanctified by the Holy Spirit, are not the choices of the 
man influenced, and is not his conduct controlled by 
the power that worketh in him, both to will and to 
do, according to his good pleasure ? And is the man 
the less a free agent because of this influence ? When- 
ever we pray for divine guidance and direction, for the 
renewing and purifying influences of the Spirit, when 
we ask to be made better, to be kept from sin, to be 
led in the way of life, are we not, in fact, asking to be 
influenced and controlled as to our moral conduct ? 
All such prayer proceeds on the supposition that the 
moral choices of man are not beyond the reach and 

30 



4G6 



STUDIES IN THEOLOGY. 



control of Deity. If God can keep the believer from 
falling into temptation and sin, lie could have kept 
Adam in like manner. 

But it may be replied that, while it is possible for 
God to prevent sin in any particular instance, as in the 
case of Adam, for example, it might not be possible for 
him to prevent it entirely. If repressed in one place, 
it may break out in another. - Of this, however, there 
is no evidence. We do not know that Deity is reduced 
to any such alternative, having only the choice of time 
and place, but compelled to admit the incursion of 
moral evil at some point into his dominions. From 
the fact that he can and does prevent sin in particular 
cases, it is fair to presume that he can prevent it in 
other cases, and in all, if he sees fit. There is no evi- 
dence that sin is a necessity of a moral system. 

The most that could reasonably be maintained, is 
that it may be that God cannot entirely prevent sin in 
a moral system. This is the form in which the matter 
is stated by Dr. Taylor of Xew Haven. 

This, however, does not furnish an explicit answer 
to the question before us. We ask why God permits 
sin ? To say, it may be he could not prevent it in a 
moral system, does not answer our inquiry, since it is 
equally true that it may be he could prevent it. If it 
cannot be proved that he can, it is equally difficult to 
prove that he cannot. It is virtually a confession of 
ignorance — an admission that we do not know. 

Now, this may be the best we can do, and all we can 
do. A positive answer may be out of the power of 
mortals. Still, when our answer must be conjectural, 
there may still be a choice of conjectures. Other 
suppositions there may be with equal, or even greater, 



THE DOCTRINE OF SIX. 



467 



probabilities in their favor. It is not enough, then, to 
say it may J>e God could not prevent sin in a moral 
system, and assign that as an answer to the question 
before ns, without first inquiring what reason there is 
to think that he could not, and whether there is not 
more reason for thinking that the true answer may lie 
in another direction. As in reply to the objection 
against the divine benevolence, which is the use Dr. 
Taylor makes of it, the statement may suffice. To 
meet that objection, it may be enough to say we do 
not know that God could have prevented sin in a moral 
system. The burden of proof then falls on the ob- 
jector. But in answer to the general question before 
us, something more explicit is needed than a merely 
negative and conjectural statement. We ask evidence. 
We ask wherein this conjecture or possibility is prefer- 
able to any one of the many other possible solutions — 
wherein it is more likely to be the true one than they. 

Dr. Taylor argues that because a moral being has 
the power to sin under whatever influences exerted 
upon him, therefore it may be that he will sin ; in other 
words, it may be impossible for God to prevent him. 1 
But this does not follow. May there not be a power to 
sin, and yet a certainty not to sin ? Is it not thus with 
the holy angels, and with the redeemed in heaven ? 
Have not good men on earth the power to do many 
things which it is quite certain they will not do, if they 
are led by the Spirit of God and kept by divine grace ? 
Do not the sanctifying influences of the Spirit make 
the final salvation of the true believer a certain future 
event, while, at the same time, as all the warnings of 
Scripture imply, it is possible for him to fall away and 

1 See Lectures on Moral Government, Vol. i. Lectures, viii. ix. 



4G8 



STUDIES IN THEOLOGY. 



perish ? Nay, so far as power is concerned, has not 
God himself full power to do evil if he chooses, while 
it is absolutely certain that he will always prefer to do 
the right ? On any other supposition, what becomes of 
the virtue or rectitude of the divine character ? When 
to any moral being it is no longer a matter of choice, 
but of simple necessity, what his conduct shall be, — 
when he has no power to do other than he does, — 
where lies the morality of his action, and what credit 
properly pertains to him for virtue and rectitude ? 
But if there may be the power of sinning, and yet the 
certainty not to sin, then the prevention of sin is not 
incompatible with the requisitions of a moral system. 
It does not follow that a moral being ivill sin because 
he can, or that there is no way of preventing a given 
moral act but by rendering that act impossible. When 
God keeps a good man from some form of transgression 
into which he might otherwise fall, he does it by influ- 
ences bearing upon the choice, and not by taking away 
from the man the power of sinning. When he keeps 
Peter or Paul from utter apostasy, he does it not by 
depriving them of the power of falling away. But if 
men may be prevented from actually sinning while still 
having the power to sin, then it is not out of the power 
of God to prevent sin in a moral system. 

Whether it would be, on the whole, better to prevent 
it, in other words, whether it could be prevented in 
the best system, may still admit of question. This 
point Dr. Taylor proceeds to discuss in his second 
argument, assuming the position that it may be God 
cannot prevent all sin in the best moral system. This 
is equivalent, however, to saying that he does not 
choose to prevent it, and finds its place, therefore, 



THE DOCTRINE OF SIN. 



469 



properly under our second general theory. The sup- 
position now is that God chooses the best system ; and, 
as sin is incidental to that system, he chooses to permit 
the sin rather than adopt another system. In other 
words, he regards its permission as involving less evil 
than would result from its absolute prevention. This 
proposition will be considered in its place. 

Since it cannot be shown that God cannot prevent 
sin, we must seek the solution of our problem in the 
other direction. 

B. For some reason he did not choose to prevent it. 

a. Inasmuch as its existence is in itself desirable. 
This, however, can hardly be. Sin is never, per se, a 
desirable thing, but always hateful, and that only. 
God can have seen in it, in itself considered, nothing 
to recommend it. Otherwise, if it were a thing to be 
for any reason desired, and preferred to holiness in its 
place, God could no longer properly hate it, nor con- 
sistently forbid it. The supposition, therefore, that 
God did not choose to prevent sin because its existence 
is in itself desirable, while logically possible, is morally 
impossible, and may be dismissed without further 
comment. 

b. Inasmuch as it is the necessary means of the great- 
est good. This is supposable. It is quite possible that 
sin, while not in itself desirable, may still be the means 
of good ; possible, even, that it may be the avenue by 
which the greatest good can be most directly reached ; 
possible that in no other way could God accomplish so 
much good to the universe as by the permission of sin 
in it. Such is the theory ; and it has seemed to a 
large class of minds, eminent for wisdom and piety, 
to be the most satisfactory solution of our problem. 



470 



STUDIES IN THEOLOGY. 



Thoroughly convinced of the benevolence of God, and 
still met on every side with the palpable and gloomy 
fact of sin, it has seemed to them that somehow this 
fact must be no exception to the sublime rule of the 
divine benevolence — that somehow the goodness of 
God was at work, in and through this very gloom and 
darkness of sin, to bring about results of beneficence 
not otherwise attained. And, indeed, so much as this 
we must admit, or abandon the problem as a hopeless 
task. Doubtless the benevolence of God is somehow 
concerned in the permission of sin ; somehow at work 
to bring about the best results from that permission. 
The question is, how ? whether directly, through the 
instrumentality of sin as a direct means of good, and a 
more efficient means than any other ; or indirectly and 
in some other way. Is sin, per se, the means of good? 
Is it the means of greatest good ? Is it the necessary 
means of greatest good ? These questions must be 
answered in the affirmative by the advocates of this 
theory ; but on what grounds these answers can be 
maintained it is difficult to perceive. How can it be 
shown that sin has any tendency whatever to good ? 
Are not all its tendencies evil, and toward evil ? Left 
to its own natural working, would it ever result in 
good ? If not in good, how in the greatest good ? 
And how is it not only the means, but the necessary 
means, of that greatest good ? 

Moreover, if it be, as now affirmed, the necessary 
means of greatest good, then is not God bound, as a 
benevolent being, not only to permit, but even to 
encourage, nay, to require and demand it ? At all 
events, not to forbid it ? But he does forbid it, and 
require holiness in its place. According to the theory, 



THE DOCTRINE OF SIN. 



471 



he requires what is really not for the best good of the 
universe, and forbids what is really the most direct 
and efficient means of good to the greatest number. 
What shall we say of his benevolence in making such 
a requisition : or of his wisdom in contriving such an 
awkward and back-handed system ? 

This theory, closely examined, differs not essentially 
from the preceding ; since, if sin is in reality the direct 
and necessary means of the highest good, it is impos- 
sible to show why it is not in reality a thing to be 
desired, and to be more desired than anything else in 
its place. The greatest good is always a proper object 
of desire ; and if we may rightfully desire any given 
end, we may also rightfully desire the means necessary 
to the attainment of that end. 

c. Inasmuch as it can be overruled to good. God 
permits sin for the sake of overruling it, and bringing 
good out of it. It is a mark of wisdom to be able to 
turn a disadvantage to an advantage, and out of ap- 
parent defeat to organize ultimate and real victory. 
God shows his wisdom and power in baffling all the 
designs of Satan, and making even the malignant forces 
of evil march in the van of his own sublime purposes. 

This may be so. But is it wisdom to introduce, or 
suffer to be introduced, a difficulty for the sake of 
overcoming it, a disease for the sake of checking it, a 
rebellion for the sake of subduing it ? It is wise and 
well to heal the disorder ; but would it not have been 
wiser and better to have prevented it ? It is well and 
wise to put the fire out ; but is it wise to set the house 
on fire for the sake of putting it out ? What shall we 
say of the military leader who purposely allows defeat 
and disaster to overtake him in order to show how well 



472 STUDIES IN THEOLOGY. 

he can remedy the evil ; or of a physician who intro- 
duces a dangerous and fatal disease for the sake of 
showing his skill in subduing it ? 

But God shows his glory in meeting and overcoming 
the fearful evils which sin inflicts. True ; but he does 
not show his glory in admitting sin for the sake of 
showing his glory. It would be a questionable mercy 
that should suffer some great calamity to occur, as war 
or pestilence, for the sake of showing mercy to the sick 
and wounded. Which is the truer benevolence, to 
keep a man from falling into the water, or to suffer 
him to fall in for the purpose of showing our compas- 
sion and our skill in rescuing him? 

The theory under consideration becomes logically 
defensible only when we suppose the evil to be over- 
ruled, not merely to good, but to greater good than 
would have been otherwise attainable. If the defeat 
of to-day tends to a victory to-morrow which shall more 
than compensate for the present disaster ; if the dis- 
order which prostrates the sick man can be not only 
healed, but so healed as to leave him a stronger and 
healthier man than he was before, or ever would have 
been but for the disease, — then the case assumes a 
new aspect. Thus modified, however, the theory vir- 
tually passes over into that last discussed. The sin, it 
is now affirmed, is permitted because in no other way 
can results so desirable be attained as from admitting 
and then overruling it. In other words, its admission 
and subsequent overruling are the necessary means of 
the greatest good. It would be incumbent on the ad- 
vocate of the theory, as thus modified, to show that 
greater benefits accrue to the universe from what has 
been done to counteract sin, and turn it from its proper 



THE DOCTRINE OF SIN. 



473 



purpose and its legitimate results, than would have 
accrued from its absolute prevention ; or, to revert to the 
figure already employed, that the patient is absolutely 
better for having had the disease. This is certainly sup- 
posable, but a proposition not easily to be established ; 
nor do we perceive how, in case such a position could 
be maintained, it would be possible to avoid the con- 
clusion that sin is really a thing to be thankful for, as 
being the occasion of the highest good, even as the 
patient has reason to be thankful for the disorder 
which has resulted in his improved condition. True, 
it is not the disorder itself, but the remedies used to 
counteract it, which have wrought the improvement. 
Still, as those remedies would not have been employed 
but for the disease, the patient is really indebted to the 
latter as the occasion of his receiving the benefit, and 
in one sense the cause of it. 

d. Inasmuch as its permission, under the present 
checks and counteractions, will involve less evil than 
its absolute prevention ; in other words, because God 
saw that, all things considered, it was better to permit 
sin, under its present restrictions, than to do more 
than he is doing to prevent it. Not that it would be 
impossible to prevent it ; but that the system or plan 
which should absolutely exclude it would not, on the 
whole, be so good a plan as the present one. Why, or 
in what respect it would not be as good ; wherein the 
measures necessary for the entire exclusion of sin 
might be the occasion of more evil than its admission 
under present limitations, the theory does not under- 
take to decide. The statement is general, rather than 
specific. We do not know, and therefore we do not 
say, according to this hypothesis, precisely what the 



474 



STUDIES IN THEOLOGY. 



reason is that sin cannot be absolutely prevented with- 
out, on the whole, doing more harm than is done by- 
its present permission. Whether the difficulty lies in 
some peculiarity of moral agency or a moral system, 
rendering it unwise to modify essentially the present 
method of dealing with the evil, or whether it lies in 
some other direction, we do not know. Enough that 
to the divine mind some such reason does appear. 
Enough that, all things considered, he perceives it to 
be not for the best to do more than he is doing to pre- 
vent sin. Enough that such a supposition is possible 
and is reasonable. More definite than this we need 
not be, and cannot be, with any certainty. So much 
as this, at least, we must maintain in order to vindicate 
the divine wisdom and goodness. 

We see enough of God's holiness and hatred of sin 
to warrant the conclusion that he would prevent it if 
lie could do so consistently and wisely ; if, in other 
words, it would be for the best to do so. The fact that 
he has not prevented it, is prima facie evidence that it 
would not be for the best — that he could not in that 
way secure the best results. Of his wisdom, his holi- 
ness, his goodness, we have positive and sufficient evi- 
dence. We have, on the other hand, no evidence that 
the entire prevention of sin would have been attended 
with better results, all things taken into the account, 
than its permission under all the checks and safe- 
guards of the present system. We do not know that 
it would have been wise and good to have done more 
than he has done to prevent it. That being the case, 
the holiness and benevolence of Deity stand fully 
vindicated, and the question why is sin permitted by 
a good and wise and holy God, is answered, so far as 



THE DOCTRINE OF SIX. 



475 



it is possible for man to answer it in his present state 
of being. 

Is sin, then, for the best ? No ; but the non-preven- 
tion of sin may be for the best. It is not sin, but the 
purpose on the part of God not to do more than he is 
doing to prevent sin, that is for the best. It is the 
peculiarity of the present theory that it presents sin, 
not as a good, nor as the means of good, much less the 
necessary means of good ; but rather as an evil, and 
that wholly and continually ; while at the same time it 
supposes that there may be a greater evil than the 
present amount of sin under the conditions of the 
present system. It puts the existence of sin, not in 
the light of a greater good, but only of a lesser evil. 
Is not that the true aspect in which to view it ? It 
supposes it quite possible that to place man under the 
influences of a moral system, with freedom of action, 
exposure to temptation, motives to obedience, with all 
the safeguards that are thrown around him in the 
shape of precept, warning, and persuasion, such and so 
many, but no more, may be better than either to 
change the system entirely, or even to multiply the 
motives to right action. Who will say that this may 
not be so ? 

Does God, then, prefer sin to holiness, all things 
considered ? By no means. He hates sin, looks upon 
it never with complacency, prefers it never to holiness. 
It is not good, nor is it a means of good. But he 
prefers to suffer it, rather than to make such changes 
in the whole system of things as might be necessary in 
order to keep sin entirely out. He does not prefer sin 
to holiness ; but he prefers the lesser of two evils — sin 
under the present system to what might be in its place. 



476 



STUDIES IN THEOLOGY. 



He does not prefer tares to wheat in his field ; but he 
prefers the present status of wheat along with tares, 
rather than a condition of things in which there should 
be no tares and no wheat, or even no tares and less 
wheat. 

But here we shall be told that God is not limited in 
his operations to a choice of evils. His method is 
perfect. It would not be perfect, if it took sin into the 
account as part of the general system. Sin is not of 
God. This is the position taken by Professor Squier, 
in his work entitled "The Problem Solved." The 
attempt is made to rule out the fact of sin from the 
system of divine government, as something in no way 
pertaining to the divine method or purpose, not in- 
cluded in 1 lis plan — something which has forced it- 
self in from without, and for which God is no way 
responsible. To this we reply : Sin is in the system ; 
and the question is, How came it there ? It is here, a 
great portentous fact, not to be ruled out or ignored by 
any artifice. It is here, and must have come in, in some 
sense, by divine permission. Its coming in must have 
been foreseen by the omniscient Ruler, and taken into 
the account. And now the question is : Why was this 
foreseen approaching evil allowed to introduce itself 
into God's perfect system ? This is the real question ; 
and it is virtually, not to say studiously, ignored by 
Professor Squier. One of three things he must say in 
answer to .this question. Either its coming was un- 
foreseen on the part of God ; or, foreseeing, he was 
unable to prevent it ; or, for reasons relating to the 
general good, he did not choose to prevent it. If 
unforeseen, the fault lies with the divine omniscience. 
A wise prudence or sagacity should have kept better 



THE DOCTRINE OF SIN. 



477 



guard over the new creation. If, foreseeing the coming 
evil, he was unable to prevent it, his omnipotence is at 
fault ; and we have now the spectacle of the Supreme 
Being standing at the door of his new world, besom in 
hand, vainly striving to keep out the in-rushing tide. 
If, for wise reasons he does not choose to exclude the 
evil, then he permits it. The latter is the only really 
tenable position. 

To this Professor Squier himself must ultimately be 
driven ; since he must admit that it was at least in 
God's power to keep out sin by not creating moral 
beings, and that he can at any moment put an end to 
it, if in no other way, by destroying the system. He 
must admit that when God chose to create such beings, 
he did it with the full knowledge that they would sin. 
It was for him to decide whether a race of moral beings 
who would certainly sin should exist or not, that is, 
whether sin should exist or not ; and he decided that 
question in the affirmative. 

It avails nothing now to say, with Professor Squier, 
that sin is not of God ; that his plan does not embrace 
it, nor his eternal purpose take it in ; that his way is 
perfect, and can have nothing to do with evil in any 
form. Here are the facts. The question is : Why is 
sin allowed to break in from without into the divine 
system ? Why is such an inroad permitted ? This is 
the real problem ; and, with all deference to the title 
of the work, we beg leave to say that this little problem 
is not solved by the statements of Professor Squier. It 
is not even touched by him. As against the position 
that God is the originator and author of sin, — that he 
purposes it in the sense of contriving, procuring, be- 
coming the efficient cause of it, — the reasoning of Pro- 



478 



STUDIES IX THEOLOGY. 



fessor Sqiiier is perfectly valid ; and this would seem 
to have been the shape in which the matter lay before 
his mind. But that is not the question really at issue ; 
nor is such the position of those who maintain the 
divine permission of sin. 

To return to the theory under discussion. The 
difference between the theory now stated and the doc- 
trine that sin is the necessary means of the greatest 
good, may be thus illustrated. Among the elementary 
ingredients of the air which we breathe is a certain 
gas, deleterious, nay, fatal, to human lungs, if inhaled 
by itself, which nevertheless, in combination with other 
elements, becomes useful, insomuch that the air is posi- 
tively better with it than without it. It is there, not 
because God could not have created an atmosphere 
into which it should not enter, but it is there as essen- 
tial to the best atmosphere. It is the necessary means 
of the greatest good. What nitrogen is to the at- 
mosphere, such is sin to the general system of the 
universe. 

But, says the objector, if this is so, how is it that 
God hates this nitrogen, and pronounces it bad, and 
only bad, and forbids most absolutely all creatures to 
breathe it, or to breathe anything into which it enters, 
or to have anything whatever to do with it except to 
shun and abhor it ? Hardly consistent, this ! 

In place of such a theory, he would prefer the fol- 
lowing : Here is a block of marble, perfect in color 
and fineness and form, suitable every way for the pur- 
poses of the artist, save that in one place a stain has 
stricken through it, marring its otherwise snowy white- 
ness. This stain is, in truth, a serious defect. The 
marble were much better without it. To remove it, 



THE DOCTRINE OF SIN. 



479 



however, might be productive of greater injury to the 
marble than to suffer it to remain. On the whole, I 
choose this block as it is — choose it even in preference 
to other blocks that are without the stain, as on the 
whole superior to the others — choose it notwithstand- 
ing the defect, and in spite of it, not for the sake of it, 
nor for any good the stain will do, not to show my skill 
in removing it, not because I prefer the stain in itself 
considered to the absence of the same, but simply 
because, all things considered, this block, defective as 
it is, is better than any other which is presented to my 
choice. Sin is that stain on the best system ; admitted, 
not for its own sake, and not as means of good, but for 
the sake of the system to which it pertains ; suffered to 
remain, because the means necessary to its extirpation 
might be productive of a greater evil in its stead. 

But this, it will be said, limits the power of God. 
In a sense it does, and so do all theories which can be 
offered — this no more than the others. If we say that 
God could not have prevented sin in any system, or in 
any moral system, we directly limit his power. If we 
say he admits it for the sake of overruling it to greater 
good, we go on the supposition that he cannot secure 
that greater good as directly and as well, in any other 
way. If we say it is the necessary means of the great- 
est good, the very term " necessary " sets a limit, at 
once and positively, to the divine power. We no 
longer imply, but affirm, that it is out of the power of 
God to reach the proposed end by any other method. 
In fine, proceed as we will, we come upon essentially 
the same ground. On any theory there is this limita- 
tion, at least, that in the nature of things some methods 
of procedure and some systems are preferable to others, 



480 



STUDIES IN THEOLOGY. 



even for the Deity — that he can accomplish better 
results by certain means and methods, than by others ; 
by the present system, for example, than by one from 
which sin should be wholly excluded. At least all 
theories under B stand upon this as essentially their 
common ground, and no one of them has a right to 
charge the other with limiting the divine power, while 
itself stands equally exposed to the same charge. As 
between the general theories A and B, there is, indeed, 
this difference, that the former regards the prevention 
of sin as beyond the power of God, and so directly 
limits his omnipotence ; while the latter only supposes 
it out of his power to prevent sin and still secure the 
best results. But as between the several specific theories 
under B there is no such difference. To say that sin 
is the necessary means of the greatest good just as 
really imposes a limit to the divine method of operation 
as to say that the permission of sin involves, on the 
whole, less evil than would result from its absolute 
prevention. The difference is that, in the one case, 
the advantage of the system is attributed directly to 
sin itself as the means of good ; in the other, it is an 
advantage attained in spite of sin. In the one case, 
the introduction of sin is viewed as a positive good ; in 
the other, only as the lesser of evils. In either case 
the prevention of sin is supposed to be in the power of, 
God, but not to be, on the whole, for the best. Each 
supposes that in the nature of things some methods are 
preferable to others. So far as this, and no farther, 
does either limit the power of God. To say that the 
permission of sin may involve less evil than its absolute 
prevention, and on this account God did not choose to 
prevent it, is the same thing as to say that he cannot 



THE DOCTRINE OF SIX. 



481 



prevent sin in the best system. But we do not under- 
stand it to be the prerogative of Omnipotence to render 
all methods and measures equally advantageous. Even 
to Omnipotence thero may and must still be a choice. 

And here it may be asked : Is God, then, less happy 
because sin is in the world ? If its admission is merely 
a choice of evils, as now represented, — if he permits it 
not as an instrument of good, but merely as the occa- 
sion of less harm than would result from its entire 
exclusion, then it may well be that sin, though suffered 
to exist, is still an object of displeasure and abhorrence 
to the divine mind. Its existence, therefore, so far 
from contributing to his happiness, can only detract 
from it. Indeed, how can it be otherwise ? Every act 
of disobedience on the part of the subject must neces- 
sarily be displeasing, in the highest degree, to the infi- 
nitely pure and holy God. And is he not less happy 
when displeased, than when pleased ? 

This seems to place the happiness of God in the 
hand of the sinner. It puts it in the power of any 
moral being to add to or detract from the sum total of 
the divine happiness, according as he shall choose to 
obey or disobey the divine precepts. This is indeed a 
tremendous power. We may well shrink from a con- 
clusion so fearful. But is it not, after all, an inevitable 
result of all moral agency ? Is it not a power which 
Deity confers on all his creatures, when he makes them 
moral beings, and endows them with the fearful attri- 
bute of freedom ? Is it in the power of man or angel 
to sin against God, and not displease and offend him by 
so doing ? Would not the obedience, from this moment 
onward, of all created beings be infinitely more agree- 
able to the divine will, and in all respects more pleasing 

31 



482 



STUDIES IN THEOLOGY. 



to him than their disobedience, under the present moral 
system ? There can be but one answer to such a 
question. As the earth in all her course casts her 
broad pyramid of shadow far behind her along the 
heavens, so sin involves not only the transgressor 
himself in the gloom of eternal night, but sends its 
shadow afar among the divine purposes. That shadow 
falls upon the celestial pavements, trembles upon the 
sea of glass, touches even the eternal throne. 



VI. 



ARIANISM — THE NATURAL DEVELOPMENT OF THE VIEWS 
HELD BY THE EARLY CHURCH FATHERS RESPECTING THE 
SONSHIP AND DIVINITY OF CHRIST. 1 

Great errors seldom spring into existence of a sudden. 
Their roots run to a distance in the soil that gives them 
birth. They are the development of tendencies, the 
natural outgrowth and result of causes, that have been 
long at work, unobserved, it may be, and silently, but 
surely. They come to the light as those coral reefs of 
the southern ocean — work of a myriad toilers of the sea, 
building unseen in its depths, lifting, little by little, to 
the surface the foundations of an island or a continent. 
So come most errors into being. If you would trace 
their origin, you find it far away from the spot where 
they make their first definite appearance, hidden among 
the foundations of things. 

That form of doctrinal error termed Arianism is no 
exception to this rule. Its roots run far back into the 
first centuries, and the earliest opinions of the Christian 
church. It is the natural development of the views 
widely held by the early church Fathers respecting the 
sonship of Christ. This I shall endeavor to show. 

We shall best approach the subject by defining at 
the outset, as clearly as may be, the distinctive features 

1 A paper read before the Alumni Institute of Chicago Theological 
Seminary, at its session in October, 1866. 
483 



484 



STUDIES IN THEOLOGY. 



of that form of error whose origin we seek to trace. 
The one distinctive and essential feature of Arianisni, as 
opposed to the Trinitarian faith, is clearly this : the 
wholly subordinate character which it assigns to the 
Logos, or the Son, prior to his incarnation. While the 
Trinitarian holds the Logos, or Christ in his pre-ex- 
istent state, to be really and truly God — one in sub- 
stance with the Father, equal in power and glory, — 
the Arian makes him not only numerically distinct in 
substance, but dependent, derived, subordinate, a being 
whose existence is not eternal. Whatever tends, then, 
to assign the Logos in his original nature a place or 
character subordinate to that of the Father, tends just 
in that degree toward Arianism. 

It becomes, then, an important inquiry, what were 
the views of the early Christian teachers and Fathers 
of the church on this subject. Which of the two dif- 
ferent modes of thought and expression — that which 
conceives of the Logos as absolutely equal with the 
Father, or that which conceives of him as subordinate 
and derived — was the one generally prevalent in the 
early church? Tf, on inquiry, we find the latter to 
have been the predominant view, we shall no longer be 
at a loss to account for the rise and spread of that 
peculiar form of error known as the Arian heresy. 

I propose to show that such was the fact — that the 
essential feature of Arianism, as now stated, — that is, 
the essential and original subordination of the Logos to 
the Father, — was a doctrine prevalent in the Christian 
church long before the Arian heresy in its more definite 
form appeared ; and that, even in the controversy 
which then arose, and which distracted the civilized 
world for centuries as no other religious controversy 



ARIANISM AND THE EARLY CHURCH FATHERS. 485 



ever did, botli as regards the fierceness and continuance 
of the struggle, the full and absolute Deity of the 
Logos, in the sense in which the modern Trinitarian 
views the matter, was not held even by the adherents 
of the Athanasian faith. 

To show this, I shall appeal first to the leading 
church Fathers preceding the Council of Nice ; next, 
to that Council itself, as finding expression in its creed 
or definite formulary of faith, put forth after thorough 
discussion, and also in the illustrations, explanations, 
and arguments employed by its leading advocates in 
the statements and defence of that creed ; and I shall 
appeal finally to the subsequent defenders of the Nicene 
doctrine, from the Council of Chalcedon and the lead- 
ing church Fathers of that period, to its later advocates 
in more modern times. 

1. And first, let us inquire of the leading church 
teachers prevhom to the Council of Nice. Did they 
teach the full, supreme, absolute divinity of the Logos, 
or his divinity only in some secondary and subordinate 
sense. 

When we speak of God, we mean by that word to 
denote — what? A being self-existent, independent of 
all other beings and things, infinite in duration, power, 
and knowledge, the first cause of all things. We mean 
that such a being is ; one such ; and that one being we 
call God. When we say that Christ before his incar- 
nation, the Logos, was really and truly God, we mean, 
if we mean anything, that he was this being, self- 
existent, independent, and infinite. The question now 
is, did the Christian Fathers prior to the Council of 
Nice thus hold and teach ? When they speak of one 
God, self-existent, infinite, first cause, do they mean 



486 



STUDIES IN THEOLOGY. 



to include in this term the Logos as really as the 
Father, or do they mean the Father only, and regard 
the Logos as really a distinct being from the former — 
a being, however exalted and divine, yet in some 
respects subordinate to the former. The question ad- 
mits of but one reply. 

What says Justin Martyr? The Logos, he holds, is 
different from the Father, numerically — erepov aplO^w. 
The Father is God invisible, and therefore a different 
person or being from the God who appeared to Abraham, 
which latter was the Son or Logos. The unity or 
oneness of the two is merely a oneness of will or sen- 
timent (See Dialogue with Trypho the Jew.) In 
common with other Christian teachers of the time, 
Justin Martyr held that the Logos was not originally 
and eternally a distinct hypostasis, but was in the 
Father as the divine reason or intelligence, and that 
when God said, " Let there be light/' then the reason, 
previously dwelling as a thought in the divine mind, 
and now uttered in words, became the Logos — a sub- 
stance — a separate, animate, rational being — the Son 
of the Father. Of course such a being is neither self- 
existent, independent, or eternal ; nor is he one with 
God in any proper sense, but a being numerically 
distinct. He comes forth from the Father, derives his 
being from him, — and that in time, that is, at the 
creation of the world, — and is Deity only in a second- 
ary and subordinate sense. Such, also, are the views 
of Theophilus and Tatian. 

Clement of Alexandria shall be our next witness. 
Clement, indeed, admits the existence of the Logos as 
a hypostasis prior to the creation, but in such a way as 
involves both numerical distinction of substance, and 



ARIANISM AND THE EARLY CHURCH FATHERS. 487 



the dependence of the Logos, as a derived -being, on 
the will of the Father. He is the copy of the Father 

— debs i/c deov — God from God. 

Tertullian, 1 in his treatise against Praxeus, repre- 
sents the Son as a portion and derivation from the 
substance of the Father. The Father is the whole 
substance ; the Son a derivation and portion of the 
whole. The Father is other and greater than the Son. 
They are called one as respects the unity, resemblance, 
conjunction, the delight of the Father, the obedience 
of the Son. The Son is likened to the fruit upon a 
tree, to the stream issuing from a fountain, and to the 
radiance from the sun. 

Origen 2 holds that the Son and Spirit originate in 
the will of the Father and are subordinate to him. The 
unity is that of will, harmony of design and purpose, 
co-operation and agreement, not that of substance or 
being. This he wholly rejects. The Father is the 
source of all being : the Son is second and inferior ; 
and the Spirit is inferior to both, his operation being 
limited to the church. 

Dyonisius of Alexandria, pupil of Origen, regards 
the Son as the creation and work of the Father, as the 
ship is the work of the builder, having neither the 
same nature or essence. From this extreme view he 
afterwards retracts. 

Gregory Thaumaturgus also calls the Son a creation 

— KTiais. 

Such seem to have been the prevailing views of the 
church teachers and Fathers previous to the Council 
of Nice. They grew naturally out of the peculiar cir- 
cumstances of the time. In their zeal against the 
Sabellian heresy, whhch merged all distinction of person 

1 Contra Praxeus, cap. ii. 8, 9. 2 De Princip. I. cap. 3. 



488 



STUDIES IN THEOLOGY. 



or hypostasis, the Fathers went over to the opposite 
extreme, losing sight of the unity of essence, and 
making the Logos a being numerically distinct from 
and subordinate to the Monas. That which is true of 
the Son as incarnate — the God-man — God manifest 
in the flesh, — that he is numerically distinct from 
and subordinate to the Father, — they applied to the 
Logos in his original state, prior to incarnation. 

2. Passing now to the Nicene Council itself, it seems 
hardly to admit of question that, with all its zeal against 
Arianism and in defence of the true divinity of Christ, 
it neither held the doctrine of numerical unity of being , 
nor full equality of the Son with the Father. The 
difference between the two is brought out prominently, 
and lies upon the very face of the creed put forth by 
the Council as expressive of its views : " We believe 
in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of all things 
seen and unseen ; and in one Lord Jesus Christ, be- 
gotten of the Father," etc. The one God, then, of the 
Nicene Creed is the Father, and is plainly and mani- 
festly distinct from the being subsequently named, 
namely, the one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God. 
He is spoken of as 6ebv Ik Beov — God from God, and 
cpm ire <£&rro? — light from light, — a derived, and not 
self-existent and independent being. True, it is a 
begotten and not created being, and begotten of the 
substance of the Father, — in these respects the error 
of the Arian heresy is fully met, — but nevertheless a 
being distinct from the one God first named, derived 
from him, and subordinate to him. In distinction from 
the Arian view, and from that of many of the Fathers 
already cited, this creed represents the Son as begotten, 
not by the will of the Father, but by necessity of his 



ARIANISM AND THE EARLY CHURCH FATHERS. 489 



nature, so that there was never a period when it could 
be said he was not. When Eusebius the historian 
hesitated to subscribe to the expressions, i/c tt)? ovauis 
rod Trarpos, and ofioovaws ra irarpi, he was assured that 
by these expressions was simply meant that the Son was 
wholly unlike any created being, and that he originated, 
not from any other being in substance, but only from 
the Father. This was unquestionably the point which 
the Xicene Fathers had chiefly in view. They set 
themselves strongly in opposition to the Arian tenet 
that the Son was a created being, and as such originat- 
ing in time. This they strongly deny ; but there is no 
evidence that they held the numerical unity of sub- 
stance or being of the Son and the Father, or the full 
equality of the former with the latter. No doubt they 
really believed the Son and Spirit to be truly God ; 
but when they call the Son ojAoovcrios with the Father, 
they mean simply that the two have a common nature, 
— share the Godhead in common, — and not that he is 
self-existent and independent, or numerically one and 
the same being with the Father. This they nowhere 
affirm ; but, on the contrary, by express statement as 
well as by implication, deny it. The Father and Son 
are one, in their view, as belonging to a common 
genus — individuals under a particular class or species, 
namely, that of Deity. This was the point mainly in 
dispute with the Arians, who placed the Son not in the 
rank of Deity, but assigned him to the class of created 
beings. 

If we look now at the views of those who were the 
leaders among the Nicene Fathers, and may therefore 
be taken as the exponents of the real meaning of the 
creed itself, we find them precisely as now stated. 



400 



STUDIES IN THEOLOGY. 



The self-existence, independence, numerical unity of 
being, and absolute equality of the Son with the Father, 
they certainly do not hold. 

Athanasius, the great leader of the Nicene Council, 
and of the Trinitarian party, distinctly recognizes the 
ovala, the essence or substance of the Son as distinct 
from that of the Father, and the offspring of it — 
<y6vvr){ia ovatcis rov irarpo^. The one is an ovaia yevvw- 
to? ; the other an ovaia aykwryros. The Son is derived, 
then, as to his essence or substance, from the substance 
of the Father, and is, of course, not numerically one 
with him as to being, not self-existent, not independent, 
not equal ; for that which begets is in the nature of the 
case, in so far, at least, superior to that which is be- 
gotten. Athanasius in one passage uses the term 
6/jLo<f)vi]s as equivalent to opoovaios, that is, of the same 
nature, an expression applicable to all individuals pos- 
sessing a common nature, and belonging to the same 
genus, as all men or all animals. (See his Treatise de 
Synodis, p. 923.) 

Gregory Nazianzen denies numerical unity, and un- 
derstands by the unity of the Godhead only agreement 
of purpose and operation. Though they differ in 
number, they are not divided in power. The persons 
of the Godhead are byuoovoioi, just as Adam, Eve, and 
Seth were o/xoovo-ioc, that is, as possessing a common 
nature. The Trinity is like three suns shining with 
combined light. (Opp. I. pp. 562, 598.) 

Basil the Great says the advocates of the Nicene 
Creed acknowledge a God who is one, not in number, 
but in nature — ov/c apiO/iay aWa rfj cfrvaei, (hi. p. 81). 
He explains the word o/ioovaoov as denoting simply 
unity of rank, or the same dignity of nature, with the 



ARIAXISM AN'D THE EARLY CHURCH FATHERS. 491 



Father, and says the word was chosen for this purpose 
by the Nicene Fathers. 

To the same effect Gregory of Nyssa. The name 
God with him is a generic idea, denoting the whole 
divine nature which the different persons share in 
common ; so that there are not three gods, but only 
one. This is illustrated by reference to Peter, Paul, 
and Barnabas, who, he says, are not three ovaiai, but 
only one, and are called three men only by a figure of 
speech or abuse of language. (Cur non tres Dii sunt, 
p. 447.) 

When Chrysostom. then, calls Adam and Eve ofioou- 
aioi,, that is, of the same nature, and says that children 
are 6(j,oovctlol with their parents, by way of illustrating 
the relation of the Son to the Father, it is evident that 
he understands by the term just what the Fathers 
already cited understood by it — the participation of 
different individuals in a common nature. If, in addi- 
tion to this, they have the same power and glory, as 
Hilary taught, and are harmonious in purpose and 
co-operative in action, as the Nicene Fathers generally 
held, this constitutes all the unity that is to be ascribed 
to God. So they believed and taught. 

Athanasius himself uses almost the same form of 
expression to illustrate the unity of the Godhead which 
we have just cited from Gregory and Chrysostom. 

We men," he says, " consisting of a body and a soul, 
are all <f>vaea)<; kul ovalas, of one nature and 

essence ; but we are many persons." Are we, then, 
all one man ? it might be asked. 

The same mode of illustration is employed by some 
of the modern defenders of the Nicene Creed. Thus 
Hooker, in his Ecclesiastical Polity : " As no man but 



492 



STUDIES IN THEOLOGY. 



Peter can be the person which Peter is, yet Paul hath 
the self-same nature which Peter hath. Again, angels 
have every one of them the nature of pure and invisible 
spirits ; but every angel is not that angel which ap- 
peared in a dream to Joseph." 1 It would seem to 
follow from this that, as the unity or oneness of sub- 
stance of the Father and Son consists in their having a 
common nature, — namely, the divine nature or oiWa, 

— and as all men, in like manner, have a common 
ovala, — namely, the human — and all angels, in the 
same manner, a common ovaca, — namely, the angelic, 

— there is just the same reason and propriety, and no 
more, in calling the Son and the Father one God that 
there is in calling Peter and Paul one man, or all 
angels one angel. The divine unity vanishes, in this 
way, in a mere figure of speech. 

3. Passing now from the Nicene Council and its 
prominent leaders and defenders to those who in later 
times have advocated the same general views, we find 
the Council of Chalcedon, one hundred and twenty-six 
years after that of Nice, adopting the same creed, and 
proposing to make it a finality. That they did not 
understand the term ofioovcnos to denote numerical 
oneness of being, but only homogeneousness or same- 
ness of nature, is evident from the fact that they affirm 
that Christ is as to his humanity ojuloovctlos with us. 

In a word, nothing can be plainer than that the early 
Fathers, both before and at and after the Nicene Coun- 
cil, regarded the Father only as avrodeos, self-existent ; 
while the Son and Spirit were derived and subordinate 

— one with the Father, not in being, but only as pos- 
sessing the same generic nature, and agreeing in pur- 

1 Eccl. Pol. v. 51. See also Shedd's Hist. Doct. i. p. 316. 



ARIANISM AND THE EARLY CHURCH FATHERS. 493 



pose and action. In his defence of the Nicene Creed, 
Bishop Bull, citing numerous passages from the Nicene 
Fathers as authority, holds the following language : 
u The Father only possesses this divine nature of 
himself; but the Son from the Father. Hence the 
Father is the fountain, origin, and beginning, fons, 
origo, et principium, of the divinity which is in the 
Son." The Greek Fathers, as he shows, speak of the 
Father as alVto? rod vlov, author of the Son, and ainov 
tov elvai, author of his being : while the Latin Fathers 
call him auctor, radix, fons, caput. 

The catholic doctors who wrote previously to the 
synod, as well as those who wrote after it, he says, 
approved the decision of the Council that the Son is 
#eo? he 0€ou. " For they all with one breath taught 
that the divine nature and perfections belong to the 
Father and Son, not collaterally or co-ordinately, but 
subo rdinately , that is to say, that the Son has the same 
divine nature in common with the Father, but commu- 
nicated by the Father Hence the Father is the 

fountain, origin, and principium of the divinity which 
is in the Son." He affirms, also, that these teachers 
all agree in the belief " that God the Father is greater 
than God the Son, even as regards divinity" that is, 
as he explains, " in respect to dignity or origin ; since 
the Son is from the Father, and not the Father from 
the Son." 

Professor Shedd, 1 indeed, seeks to qualify this by 
saying that Bull means only that the person or personal 
peculiarity of the Father is superior to the person of 
the Son. But Bull is talking not of person, but of 
divinity, which is not a peculiarity of the person, but 

1 Hist. Doct. i. p. 339. 



494 



STUDIES IX THEOLOGY. 



of the being or nature — the ovala, and not the vtto- 
cttclgl*;. 

Not to pursue our inquiries further, it is perfectly 
evident that the early Christian Fathers, both before 
and after the Council of Nice, while they believed in 
the real divinity of Christ, and were neither Arians 
nor intentionally tritheists, still did not regard the Son 
as originally and prior to the incarnation one and the 
same being with the Father, but, on the contrary, 
numerically distinct ; did not regard him as avrodeos, 
self-existent and independent, but, on the contrary, a 
being derived from, and therefore dependent on, the 
Father. Their oneness is simply sameness of nature, 
and harmony of feeling and purpose. It is hardly 
necessary to say, that this distinction of essence or 
being conflicts with the true and proper unity of God, 
and this derivation and dependence with the true and 
proper divinity of the Son. A derived and dependent 
God, a secondary God, a God not self-existent, is to 
the truly Christian mind no God. I care not whether 
he be eternal or a creature of time — if not self-existent 
and independent, he is not truly God ; if not one with 
the Father in being, and equal in power and glory, he 
is not truly God. 

But when we make the Father the fom et princip- 
ium of Deity, when we make him the producing cause 
of the second and third persons or hypostases, — the 
audor et origo, the airiov rod etvai,, the author of the 
being or essence of the Son and Spirit, — do we not 
at once elevate him far above the Son and Spirit in 
power and glory ? And for us to say afterward that 
they are equal does not make them so. If derived and 
dependent, they are not equal. For us to say that 
they are, is simply to contradict ourselves. 



ARIAXISM AND THE EARLY CHURCH FATHERS. 495 



Nor does it materially relieve the case to introduce 
the distinction which later theologians have made be- 
tween hypostasis or personality, and essence or being, 
and to say that the Father is the author of the person- 
ality of the Son and Spirit, but not of their essence — 
a view maintained by the modern advocates of the 
Nicene Creed, Professor Shedd among the latest. For, 
in the first place, nothing is plainer than that the 
Nicene Fathers made no such distinctions, and intended 
no such thing. The terms ovg'lcl and vitogtclgis were 
then used as synonymous, both being equivalent to the 
Latin substantia. They are employed as synonymous 
in the creed itself; the later distinction, by which 
hypostasis came to denote appearance or personality, 
in distinction from substance, not being then known. 
The Nicene Fathers, from Athanasius downward, dis- 
tinctly affirm not that the hypostasis or personality, 
but that the substance, the oiWa, of the Son is begotten, 
and that from the substance or ovGia of the Father. 
This we have already sufficiently established. But 
even if it were not so, I do not see that the difficulty is 
essentially relieved by the distinction now made. For 
whether it be the essence, or only the personality of 
the Son that is produced or derived, he is still, in so 
far forth as he is derived, not an independent, self- 
existent being, and certainly not equal in power and 
glory to the Father from whom his personality is de- 
rived. To the latter still belongs the power and glory 
of begetting or producing the Son, as respects, at least, 
his personality ; and the greater the power and glory 
we attribute to the second person, the greater the power 
and glory of begetting that person, and so the greater 
the difference between the two. 



496 



STUDIES IN THEOLOGY. 



As the result of our investigations, then, we are 
compelled to the conclusion, that there was in the 
prevalent mode of thinking and speaking of Christ in 
the early period of the church, both before and after 
the Council of Nice, that which really involved the 
essential principle of Arianism, which found its natural 
development in that form of error, and which, with all 
their opposition to Arianism, still pervaded the Nicene 
Creed and the opinions of its advocates. 

The essence of Arianism, as Professor Stuart well 
remarks, " consisted in maintaining that Christ was a 
being in some respects inferior to God, and created in 
time ; in other words, that he was a derived, dependent 
being, and therefore neither infinite nor eternal. The 
great rallying-point was that lie was a created being 
On this, by deduction, all the rest of Arius's positions 
depended. This position the Nicene Fathers, in the 
most express and direct manner possible, often and 
earnestly contradicted. We ought in justice to allow 
their disclaimer or contradiction. But what did they 
substitute in the room of an origin by creation ? They 
substituted generation, and (by implication) eternal 
generation, inasmuch as they anathematize all who say, 
rjv 7t6t6 ovk i]v. Where, then, are we now ? We are 
simply in this predicament, namely, we have passed 
from the camp of those who maintain a beginning of 
the Son's existence in time and by creation, and gone 
over to the camp of those who declare that there is no 
definite time or limitation as to the beginning of the 
Son's existence, and that he was not created, but be- 
gotten. It is well; but we may still inquire, How 

much have we gained by this transition ? All 

that the Nicene symbol does is to deny one mode of 



AM AX ISM axd the early church fathers. 497 



production, — namely, that by creation, as asserted by 
the Arians, — and to put another in its stead. Pro- 
duction or generation, applied fully and directly to the 
Saviour's divine nature, is what the Kicene Fathers 

meant most explicitly to declare Both Arius 

and his opponents, then, virtually acknowledge the 
derivation and dependence of the Son. They divide 
and dispute and anathematize each other because of 
different opinions about the mode of his derivation ; 

and the dispute was principally concerning this 

For myself I feel compelled to say, that, although I 
view the Nicene Creed as a nearer approach than 
Arianism to the Scripture doctrine concerning the Son, 
inasmuch as it maintains that he is eternal, yet on the 
great point of self-existence and independence, those 
indispensable and essential attributes of Godhead, what 
there is to choose between Arianism and Nicenism I 
wot not." 1 

The tendency of the views now stated is to serious 
error, and that in a twofold direction. On the one 
hand, the subordination of the Son, as a dependent 
and derived being, secondary to the Father, and pro- 
ceeding from him, tends logically to a denial of the 
true and proper divinity of Christ, and is, as we have 
seen, the parent root of Arianism. On the other hand, 
the denial of the numerical unity of being in the Godhead, 
the resolving it, as we have seen, into mere agreement 
and co-operation of different individuals sharing a com- 
mon divine nature, tends directly to polytheism. For 
if this be all that is meant by the cardinal doctrine of 
the divine unity, no reason can be shown why the same 
unity might not be so extended as to embrace any 

1 Remarks on the Xicene Creed, in Biblical Repository, April, 1835. 



498 



STUDIES IN THEOLOGY. 



number of deities — even all the gods of Grecian and 
Roman mythology. Nay, it is polytheism in the definite 
shape of tritheism. The Father is one God, fons et 
principium divinitatls ; the Son and Spirit, distinct 
beings from the Father, are also each really and truly 
God — the three sharing the divine nature in common 
— one Godhead, but three Gods ; just as there is one 
human nature, one manhood, but any number of men. 
True, the three divine beings are o^ioovcrio^ of the 
same substance or nature ; but so also are the human 
father and the human son, according to the same 
Nicene teachers. Nay, so are all men 6/jloovctioi, of one 
substance or nature, namely, the human. The unity 
of God resolves itself into a unity of the divine nature ; 
and the Father, Son, and Spirit are one only as Peter, 
Paul, and Barnabas are one, or all men are one. 

But I must not prolong the discussion. The student 
who is disposed to pursue the subject further will find 
it to his purpose to study the writings of the Fathers 
immediately preceding and subsequent to the Council 
of Nice, particularly the writings of Athanasius. In 
addition to the standard historians, Neander, Giesler, 
Guericke, and others, Stanley's History of the Eastern 
Church, Munscher's Dogmen-geschichte, and Bull's 
Defence of the Nicene Creed, particularly the two 
latter works, will put him in possession of the materials 
and authorities requisite for a full examination. There 
is also a very thorough investigation of the subject by 
Schleiermacher, which was presented in an English 
dress by Professor Stuart in the Biblical Repository for 
1835, with very full notes and comments of his own ; 
to whose articles on the subject I am indebted for 
many of the authorities above cited. 



NOTE SUPPLEMENTARY. 



Since the preceding pages were in type the work of Dr. 
Hopkins on "the Law of Love, and Love as a Law" has ap- 
peared, containing some strictures on the views maintained 
in my Moral Philosophy and also in these pages, respecting the 
ground of moral obligation. Referring to my position that right 
and wrong are distinctions eternal, immutable, and inherent in 
the very nature of things, in other words, that the actions and 
moral conduct of intelligent beings, created or uncreated, finite 
or infinite, are, in their very nature, right or wrong. Dr. 
Hopkins says : " Here, then, we have moral action which is 
eternal and has no origin ; for if the distinction be eternal, 
inhering in the nature of things, the things themselves in which 
they inhere must also be eternal." 

I reply, that does not necessarily follow. An act right or 
wrong may be committed to-day ; this act of course is not 
eternal, but the distinction between right and wrong as moral 
qualities pertaining to this act, may have existed from eter- 
nity ; that is to say, there may never have been a time when 
an action of this nature, had it been performed, would not 
have been as it is to-day, essentially and in itself a right act, or 
a wrong act. It is not necessary to suppose a murder actu- 
ally committed in order to pronounce murder a crime. It is 
not necessary to suppose a straight line actually in existence 
in order to affirm a straight line to be the shortest distance 
between two points. The distinction exists as applicable to 
all cases of the sort, supposable or actual. There may not, 
as a matter of fact, be such a thing as a straight line in the 
world ; yet that does not alter the case. If there never were 

499 



500 



STUDIES IN THEOLOGY. 



a murder or a theft committed it would still be true that mur- 
der and theft in their very idea and nature have a certain 
moral character inseparable from them. It does not follow 
that because the distinction of right and wrong is a distinction 
which is uncreated by the divine will and eternal, therefore the 
moral actions to which right and wrong pertain are also eternal. 

There is not, however, any such absurdity as Dr. Hopkins 
seems to suppose, in speaking of moral action as eternal ; for 
if we conceive of Deity as existing from eternity, and as a be- 
ing possessing moral character, then we do conceive of him as 
having from eternity exercised right and holy volitions and 
feelings, that is, right moral action. 

But further, argues Dr. Hopkins, if right be a quality of 
actions then it cannot be the ground of obligation to perform 
those actions. " It is plain," he says, " that the quality of an 
action can never be the ground of an obligation to do that 
action." With all respect for Dr. Hopkins we must say 
that this does not strike us as being " plain " at all, but on 
the contrary, the very reverse is plain. A man sees that a 
certain possible and contemplated act will, if performed, be a 
right act. That is in itself, we should say, a sufficient reason 
why he should perform it. The obligation to perform it rests 
on and arises out of the simple Tightness of the act. The ob- 
ligation not to do that which is perceived to be wrong, as, for 
example, to commit murder, arises from the simple fact that it 
is wrong. But according to Dr. Hopkins, my obligation not 
to murder my neighbor arises not at all from the essential and 
inherent wrongfulness of such an act, but from some other 
source, since, if right and wrong are qualities of actions, they 
cannot be the ground of obligation to perform those actions. 
I confess I cannot see the logic of this. The very reason, I 
should say, why any right-minded moral being would condemn 
the act of murder as in the highest degree reprehensible, and 
affirm the obligation not to commit it, is precisely what Dr. 
Hopkins declares it is not ; to wit, the inherent wrongfulness 
of the act. " Certainly," says Dr. Hopkins, " if we regard 



NOTE SUPPLEMENTARY. 



501 



right as the quality of an action, no man can be under obliga- 
tion to do an act morally right for which there is not a reason 
besides its being right, and on the ground of which it is right." 
He even goes so far as to say that if a man were to perform 
a right act, as, for example, an act of charity, simply because it 
was a right act, and for no other reason, " the act would not 
be right." What would it be then ? we cannot but ask. It 
certainly has some moral character, and if not a right act, 
then it must of course be a wrong one. Here then we have 
what ? A right action " done " for the sake of the Tightness 
of the act," and for that very reason a wrong act. 

But suppose we apply this method of reasoning to Dr. 
Hopkin's own theory of the ground of obligation. The act in 
question is right because it is in conformity with the end of 
the man's being, and hence the obligation. But is not this 
conformity again a quality of the act ? And if so how can it 
be the ground of the obligation to perform the act ? For " it 
is plain," at least it was so a moment since, " that the quality 
of an action can never be the ground of an obligation to do 
that action." 

This leads us to notice more particularly the system which 
Dr. Hopkins adopts as preferable to the one already consid- 
ered. Conformity to the end of one's being is the rule of 
right and the ground of moral obligation, according to this 
system. The moral reason affirms obligation to conform to 
the end for which one is created, which is for him the supreme 
good. This obligation is ultimate. 

This theory, it is evident, supposes a moral being to be a 
created being — which is true of some moral beings, but not 
of all — supposes him to be created for an end, and for a good 
end, which may and may not be the case. But suppose a 
being not created for a specific end, or for any good end ; 
suppose him created for a positively bad end, or suppose him 
not to have been created at all, as in the case of the very high- 
est moral being in the universe, but to be self-existent, infinite, 
and eternal. Has he then no moral character ? The system 



502 



STUDIES IN THEOLOGY. 



supposes what is indeed true — the existence of moral beings 
under the righteous rule of a benevolent Creator, who has called 
them into existence for wise and good ends — but what it has 
no right to assume, much less to make the basis of morality. 
It supposes what is manifestly not true, that all moral beings 
thus exist as created for an end. Morality must be placed en 
wider grounds than that, must include all beings, created or 
uncreated — God himself as chief of all. 

But, aside from this, the theory fails even in its application 
to the present actual system under which as created beings we 
are living. A reason can always be assigned, says Dr. Hop- 
kins, why a thing is right, and that reason, whatever it may 
be, is also the ground of the obligation in the case. What 
then, we ask, is the reason why it is right and obligatory for 
us to conform to the end of our bein^? It is ri^ht and bind- 
ing on us thus to conform according to the theory, and there 
is a reason why it is right and binding. What is that reason ? 
Suppose I do not choose thus to conform ? " But you ought," 
says Dr. Hopkins, " the moral reason affirms this obligation." 
True, but on what ground ? To say that the moral reason 
affirms it, is simply to say that I perceive and acknowledge 
it to be thus and thus. But on what ground this perceived 
obligation rests I am not yet informed. Is it that the end for 
which I am created is a benevolent one, and therefore I am 
bound to conform to it ? But why am I bound to conform to 
a benevolent end ? Is it that it is the will of the Creator that 
I should thus conform ? But why am I bound to comply 
with his will ? Shall we say, the obligation in question is 
ultimate, and no reason can be assigned why it is right and 
why it is binding on us to conform to the end of our being ? 
So Dr. Hopkins seems to regard it. But what then becomes 
of the position that a reason can always be assigned why a 
thing is right, and upon that reason, whatever it be, rests the 
obligation to do the thing ? Are we not after all in this very 
concession driven back to the conclusion that right is ultimate 
and inherent in the nature of things ? 



^7 



